Resurrection Chapter 9: This Is What It Feels Like, a vampire diaries fanfic

"We sending her home in style, Lord," The bandleader shouts, dressed down in black with a purple sash draped over his left shoulder that is decorated in white skull caricatures dancing and rejoicing. He tips his white captain's hat and raises his bedazzled cane into the air and the second line brass band commences to bang and wail into a slow drag that pierces the silence of the early overcast morning in Congo Square.

Bonnie observes from the back of the vast crowd, gloved hand entwined into the fingers of her fiancé, her yellow-hued diamond sitting squarely over the black satin.

"We will follow the procession after the family all the way to St. Louis Cathedral," Elijah whispers into her ear.

Slowly the congregation of family and friends spills out onto North Rampart street and Elijah grips her fingers to come along but she dawdles, scanning the faces for Klaus through the black veiled Fascinator she has adorning her head.

He is nowhere to be found.

She actually has not seen him since she and Elijah left Maison Rose yesterday afternoon. After she said yes to the engagement. He had appeared briefly with a stretched smile and a bottle of champagne. "To Victory" He stated without any of his usual joy over getting what he wanted. He poured the glasses and he stood between them explaining how the fake relationship would give them several events, traditionally considered neutral in times of war for them to take New Orleans.

"If we don't accomplish what we want by the engagement party then we have the shower and bachelor party, but this should all be behind us before you two have to stand before a priest." He laughed dryly before being interrupted by his brother who points out that Bonnie smells very much like Klaus.

"It will make for great gossip that the fiancé of one brother has the intimate scent of the blood of the other on her but it will not aid in assisting us in staging this epic romance."

Klaus's eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. "Then give her your blood."

"Bonnie, would you do me the honor of partaking in my blood?"

She searched for a response from Klaus who excused himself, a frozen smirk on his face, explaining that they should do this alone and Elijah reached for a hair pin on the vanity and pricked his finger and pressed droplets of his blood into Bonnie's champagne flute. The act was proper and had all of the class that one would assume from Elijah. The champagne turned a shade of pink. "Here you are, my dear."

She had dutifully swallowed the blush concoction and thought Klaus's blood had tasted much sweeter.

As the long procession begins to turn on Toulouse street, the drums beat faster and the horns blare. Tourists stop and stare or pour out from the iron wrought balconies to snap photos from their iPhones and Quarter people strolling through their neighborhood wave whatever they have in their hands at the procession and touch the top of their heads before continuing on about their business.

The bandleader raises his cane up and shouts out to the crowd over the music, "God is Good?"

And the crowd yells back to him. "All The Time!"

Bonnie anxiously goes over her backstory in her head as she and Elijah walk hand in hand approaching the iconic spires of St. Louis Cathedral. She readies herself and her nerves for anyone who might ask her a question about where she was from or how she met Elijah.

Along with putting her together that morning Elijah delivered a fabrication of her life and their love story.

"Let us go with the Gucci," He said more to himself than to Bonnie, who knew nothing of labels and fashion. She fussed around with her hair in the bathroom while waiting for him to complete laying out her debut ensemble.

They spoke back and forth through the open door.

"Your mother died in childbirth, which is an unfortunate common fatality for witches." He informed like it was fact, "You were raised by your father who was in the Army, which makes you a military brat. You have moved so many times that you don't have roots any one place so you consider yourself a world citizen. And you were backpacking in Europe when we met over a year ago in a little cafe in Florence. We fell in love and from all our constant lovemaking you became pregnant.

She stomped out of the bathroom and threw up her hands, "Whoa, whoa. Pregnant?"

Elijah grabbed the sheath dress from the bed and held it up to her frame, "Bear with me," He smile delighted with whatever vision he captured by holding up the form fitted dress against her in the terry robe. "We were delighted by the news, over the moon really, by our love creating life, and because I felt so expansive I share the news with Klaus who has and always will be protective of a Mikaelson family member, well, the ones that don't cross him, but since it's a baby he's open. But you suffer from the same fate as your mother and you pass before bringing the child to term. I am grief stricken and Klaus decides to have Mama T resurrect you so that I can climb out of a pit of darkness and despair.

"Vampires can impregnate women?"

"Only witches, but just like with a human man, it is rare for the child to live. Which means you Bonnie dear, are a rare gift."

She had beamed when he said that.

Bonnie follows Elijah's lead and steps aside to stand on the steps while everyone enters the cathedral. Some of the elders know of Elijah, stories passed on from who ever raised them. The stories must have painted this Mikaelson as to be one of the good ones, for they stopped to speak even though the younger family members walked by without a word.

"How is you, Elijah?"

She is introduced as the love of his life and the two of them gush and smile over one another and shake wrinkled hands and tell each one how pleased they are to meet with the community as they will be making New Orleans home. They repeat this story so much that Bonnie glances over at Elijah and realizes that there is no more prickly feeling, but that doesn't stop her from leaning into him and asking privately where was his brother.

Another elder appears and Elijah gives them his full attention before answering her.

Always a gentleman, he makes sure to recall details about this elderly woman's ancestors, stories that were long forgotten. And Bonnie feels good at how the old woman face lifts with a smile when he remembers drinking with her rowdy horn playing uncle.

Bonnie lets them greet while she wonders where the hell is Klaus. She really wanted to know what he was up to. After spending every waking moment together it just seemed like the world wasn't right that he wasn't by her side.

She begins to fidget and Elijah notices. His hand settles on the small of her back to calm her down as she recites her lines for the old woman.

"I don't know what my life would be like without him," She repeats and forces a smile and then Elijah informs them both that funeral should be starting soon and offers one of his arms to assist the woman into the church and the other to Bonnie who tells him to just help her in. "You go ahead with her, sweetheart. I need a moment to myself." She smiles even though she is pretty sure Elijah could tell by her voice that something was amiss about her.

She looks back out over the square, the garden and the people strolling to enjoy its beauty, the street vendors and tarot card readers, the teenagers skateboarding and the peddlers strumming guitars for money, and there is a sudden panic to the possibility that he is not coming.

How could he not come? Wasn't all of this for him?

With anger bubbling to the surface she reaches for the cathedral door when a hand catches it before her.

"You are a sight, love," Klaus grins in his dark jeans and tan t-shirt, his blue eyes darkening as they drink her in, "You play the part very well if I do say so myself."

There were angry tears that were about to spill right before he appeared and now the elation of seeing him when she wanted to see him so badly leaves her bewildered.

He reaches for her veil and lifts it ever so slightly and kisses her at the corner of her mouth, "Did you think I wouldn't show up?" He says softly, his mouth still close to hers. She slowly shakes her head and he kisses her quickly again.

"Shall we?" He says, opening the door.

And she walks into the Therese Guidry's funeral arm in arm with Niklaus Mikaelson.

The cathedral is teeming with the energy of family and friends, humans and witches, vampires and wolves, all dressed to the nine, old women in colorful hats with perfumed necks and wrists, stockings even in the heat, old men in fedoras with polished canes, young men in their sunday best, and some in their freshest sneakers, young women in elaborate braids, curls, lace-fronts and fades. And the babies, the many babies who are bounced from lap to lap or carried out to the front if they can't quiet down, their small voices are the only noises that shrieked out over the whispers of the crowd.

That's her. That's her right there.

It is Mama T's funeral but Bonnie is the star of the show.

Pulling the gloves from her sweaty hands, Bonnie wonders if there was a funeral for her when she passed. Even if there wasn't a body, as Klaus detailed to her where he found her, but if the people who loved her still had a service to remember her; picking out a pretty casket to hold things of hers they wanted to give her, maybe laying her favorite flower, peonies, on top of the glossy lid when it was time. She thinks of this while she still holds onto Klaus's fingers in her lap, oblivious to Elijah's chagrin.

The whispers grow louder and louder, bombarding Elijah and Klaus's ears.

Klaus yanks his fingers from her grasp and Elijah drapes a protective arm around her, sliding closer to her, forcing her into an intimacy for the onlookers and Bonnie settles that she probably didn't have a funeral. As the priest recites the Catholic rites of death, she stares at an altar of oranges at the foot of the all white casket. Who mourns me?

The priest asks for loved ones to come and speak but to please be conscious of the time. A line quickly forms at the mic and Bonnie becomes conscious of the whispers, not that she can hear them, but she can sense the shift of the air around her, feel pairs beyond pairs of eyes on her, and not the curiosity of the stream of elders she greeted with Elijah, the energy behind these irises is of something sinister and dark, it makes her move ever so slightly, makes her fidget with the gloves in her lap, but in that energetic melee' of disgust and jealousy there is an energy that stands out to her, and she is certain that it belongs to the particular pair behind her that is burning a laser beam into her nape.

She caresses the back of her neck and spins her head around briefly to see the line of vampires behind her, white ones, black ones and the colors in between, and although they were definitely upset by her presence, none of them possessed the burning gaze. She exhales a breath she doesn't realize she has been holding when she comes face to face with dark almond shaped eyes on a handsome smiling face.

The handsome smiling face from the locket.

"I am the great- great grandniece of Therese Guidry, who we all know by Mama T." Antoinette Guidry is covered in reddish brown freckles that match her sandy colored hair, springy curls that frame her symmetrical face from under her head wrap. She is dressed in a simple black dress and flat shoes but she has on big silver earrings in the shape of the continent of Africa. She is the color of manila paper with a full pink pout and serious eyes. She couldn't be more than twenty years old but she speaks loudly and stands with her chest out with all the gumption of a grown ass woman.

"Mama T was like a mother to me and I know she had that title for a lot of us here. I know I'm not the only one. She was a child of God and a woman with courage and character and a heart with room for all of us. She loved us. She raised me to be woman you see standing right here. Like you, I come from the same place that has tried to drown so many of us, but with Mama T there, we always had someone to offer us a life raft. She was our hope. She always taught us we had to choose better, that we had to look out for one another and that eventually we would have to fight for what is ours."

Antoinette's words do not fall upon deaf ears.

The priests walk up and down the aisles shaking the ornate incense holders billowing smoke of myrrh over the congregation as if they were blessing the words of Antoinette.

"Let us pray."

Those who could still genuflect, took to their knees and those who couldn't, stood with their eyes closed in prayer, except for Elijah, Klaus and the handsome smiling face behind Bonnie.

At the end, the priest invited all of the family and friends to come and comfort one another at the repass for Therese Guidry that was to be held on the shores of Bayou St. John.

There wasn't a choir, but those in the congregation who could sing began to belt.Take My Hand Precious Lord, as they each passed by the white casket, saying their last goodbyes to Mama T.

"I thought you said she was Klaus's fiancé, but now you telling me she's yours?"

"Please do not take my duplicity in this matter as a feature of my character. I would and will do anything to protect Bonnie but….

Klaus listens in on his brother explain the switcheroo of Bonnie's lover, half annoyed, half amused as he watches his brother's hand slide down Bonnie's back as the trio stammers through the introductions.

"We lost her and got you. I guess Mama T had her reasons…"

Klaus suppresses a smirk when a firm hand settles on his shoulder.Klaus. It's a familiar voice. A voice he hasn't heard in decades. And before he looks up at the face of his child, he smiles, because he remembers a time when he commanded that that voice speak in a way that the world would listen. And now..

"Marcellus."

Anyone who didn't know better would look over at the two vampires and figure that they loved each other very much so and that there was no way in hell that both were plotting the demise and death of the other, but this is the Mikaelson's we are talking about and love and hate are of the same coin.

Marcel beams, showing all of his pearly whites, "Just Marcel, Klaus."

And although Klaus's knows it is supernaturally impossible for his protege to have grown an inch, or to have gained an ounce, or to have formed fine lines of wisdom around the eyes, he stands in front of his creation and knows that the vampire has changed though, emotionally, psychologically, mentally…atomically. There was no need for an outward change of appearance.

This Marcel is not the Marcel of yore.

Klaus grips Marcel's shoulders and there is something in his face, something that Bonnie has seen before when she has caught him staring at her too long, a look she hasn't given a name, but a look Elijah has seen before, rarely, but still recognizable over the millennia.

Elijah places his own hand over his brother's resting on Marcel's shoulder. "Niklaus, you want to introduce Bonnie to Marcellus?"

"It's just Marcel now, " Klaus says before Marcel can correct Elijah.

The nudging from Elijah breaks Klaus's trance, and Elijah's observes his brother come back to himself.

Klaus stretches his mouth into a twisted smile, "It would be an honor. She is after all the reason for this funeral." He states, "Marcel, please allow me to introduce you to Bonnie, soon to be Mikaelson by way of marriage to our dear Elijah."

Marcel reaches for Bonnie's hand and brushes his mouth against her bare knuckles and she looks up into those eyes that burned her skin earlier thinking so you're the reason for the splinter of the family, for the fire, for Mama T, for me.

"Marcel is an old friend of the family," Elijah says smiling. And she expects the smile from her charming betrothed but she notices that everyone was all smiles, even the vampires who crowded behind Marcel. Smiles hiding fangs and daggers behind backs, this how business was dealt with and Bonnie stands among their frozen smiles and dares to to frown.

"I've heard a lot about you, " She states honestly because she never learned to be comfortable with a lie; she doesn't know this but she wasn't much for dishonesty in her old life either.

Her admission causes a shuffling of feet and stares from Marcel's minions but Marcel's laugh fills the back of the church and he tells her he won't bother asking if what she heard was good things.

"I wish I could say that they were," Bonnie says, which makes Elijah interrupt her from saying anything else. "It has been a very long day and I think its best if I get her home, we have a lot to do as far as prepar-

But Marcel grabs her hand again so quickly and unceremoniously, that her breath hitches, and she stumbles forward a bit closer to the vampire king, and he lifts her wrist to his nose and inhales with a smile, turning their awkward meeting even more awkward as Klaus and Elijah edge themselves in between her and the young vamp. And Marcel grins, beaming from brother to brother, and apologizes for his crude behavior. Marcel bows slightly to Bonnie and explains that he just wanted to understand why Elijah did what he did, but he understands now.

Elijah was always falling for beautiful things.

Ensconced by no less than twenty or so vampires, Marcel turns to leave and Bonnie feels the burning sensation again and doesn't quite discern if it was his magic or from his witch, who she never saw, and doesn't see among the gaunt faces and before the doors close behind him, he says softly "Always and forever, right?". And with that the vampire king's words linger with the three of them in the church with Mama T's flower laden casket.

The Peculiar Institution.

That's what they called it.

Over a hundred and seventy years ago, Klaus watched the boats idling down the Mississippi from a journey through the watery interior of America, unloading in front of the French Market, carrying the country's most lucrative commodity. Flesh.

Klaus's own cane tapped along Esplanade avenue where humans were kept behind private, well-kept homes. There weren't any markers dictating what they were, nor were there men loudly shouting their wares inside. Instead the purchases were made in sitting rooms and parlors, in hushed voices, word of mouth, negotiations settled before Mardi Gras and after Easter.

Peculiar, indeed.

Hypocrisy did not amuse Klaus like it did Elijah, he didn't concern himself with emulating traditions or mores, nor did he struggle with a compassion for those that suffered from these traditions and mores as his brother did.

Klaus killed indiscriminately. Saint and Sinner. Oppressed and Oppressor. He would attend a gathering in the most genteel of homes and everyone would perish under his bite. Never was there a moment where he questioned his morality as they clawed at his face and hands, pleas to the Christian god or the ones that were carried over the Atlantic from the groves of Western Africa, transfigured by the new world and its new pain.

The suffering of prey had no shape or color, it did not haunt him or even nudge the periphery of his day to day.

Blood, family, lust, sex, and the constant escape from Mikael's grip.

What is the suffering of one human over another?

Klaus probably would have continued on pondering the absurd until he was a witness to a young, very young (he couldn't have been more than eight, remember how he had to look up at you) field hand who in a defiant rage threw an apple at an overseer and caught the attention of Death.

Hordes of sweaty bodies move out of Klaus's path as he walks the blocks homeward from the Cathedral. Bonnie and Elijah had left in a limousine but he forwent the dreary trappings of the car to get lost in the crowd.

The crowd carries him to the edge of Royal street, a renovated compound consisting of two french townhomes and a spanish courtyard with manicured trees and plants and a bubbling fountain. The home is the only quiet this side of the Quarter.

At one time, inside the home, three gods, well, and one goddess werehappy, and the rest…

Klaus smiles at the curlicue "M" in the iron wrought gate enclosing the compound's grounds. He glances up at the top left window, his son's old room, and in the window sits a young girl-child. She spies him and her brow furrows, raven tendrils framing her doll-like face with an upturned nose and dark almond shaped eyes. She can't be more than ten but her eyes stare him down and he returns her glare with a grin, and she sticks out her tongue and slams the shutters.

When he reaches his home the sun has long set, there is the thud after thud of books hitting a desk, and on the hallway entry table is a gilded invitation to a ball.

You are cordially invited to the Fall Masquerade hosted by Marcel Gerard.

He passes by the open door of the study and the pile of books piled on to the polished desk where Elijah still dressed in his funeral's best but with a loosened tie and disheveled hair, thumbs through page after page.

"There shall be no sulking tonight, Elijah. We are on the verge of taking back our city, dear brother and we must celebrate," Klaus says, ready to recount how he had visited their former home.

Elijah nods that he will join in on the drink,"Bonnie and I are having lunch with Mama T's former coven tomorrow, these books have the history of the different covens lineage of New Orleans. She has the magic they will respect but I am ensuring she will also have a knowledgeable partner."

Klaus doesn't delve too far into the why his brother's use of partner makes him bristle. He pours himself a drink. The rationale of their pretend relationship is that it is necessary and decisions were made for his crown and he is content with his decisions.

"After the display at the funeral it seems he wants this war just as much as you do," Elijah expresses with amusement, "I had higher expectations for Marcel."

Klaus snorts, "I did raise him."

Tossing a book aside and grabbing another, Elijah agrees and discloses his concern over Marcel's reaction to Bonnie, "...he can detect your scent on her. This farce of a relationship will not buy the time you think it will."

"So we speed up the plan, she's ready, she could have killed them all in that church," Klaus boasts, annoyed and also very aware that his brother is right.

There is a silence that sits between them and Klaus stops Elijah from his interrogation yet again on why he wanted to annihilate someone he loves.

"You don't know what I feel," He snaps, "He betrayed us," He offers as the conclusion.

The brothers had never discussed after they had to flee in the middle of the night from their home with the shirts on their backs on who had told Mikael where to find them.

And they wouldn't say who it was now.

"We betrayed him," is all Elijah says back to his brother who is uncharacteristically sober after his questions, "And it's high tim-"

Klaus sighs and rolls his wrist, "Just get on with it, Elijah."

Elijah rises, holding one of the tomes in his hand, "It is not too late, Niklaus. You still have a chance to do the right thing."

Klaus slurps directly from the jagged tear in the plastic bag, blood spilling over his gums and on his shirt. He squeezes the bag, pleased to have found the stash at the bottom of the freezer and that the blood would meet his biological need for sustenance, but he knows the blood will do nothing to satiate his hunger.

He trades the flattened bag for the opened bottle of vodka on the corner table and touches the screen of his phone, his thumb hovering over Caroline's text before he eventually tosses it onto the covered chesterfield.

The moonlight beams through the windows of the drawing room, where Klaus has attempted to hide out from the world. After the conversation with Elijah, he had locked himself in the drawing room, warning the help and Elijah to leave him be for the evening.

The moonlight casts shadows on the floor to ceiling, stak white canvas before him and he pines for his lavish basement in his Mystic Falls hideout: the bluest room, almost black, stark of furniture and light save the paintings he had bothered to pack with him over the years.

There are no basements in New Orleans for the same reason why they don't bury you in the ground. Strange things happen below sea level, something the first settlers discovered when they hacked the dirt to bury their loved ones, only to soon find their beloveds swollen caskets pushed back to the living world.

Nothing stays buried in New Orleans.

With all your talk, here I am, begging you for help, and you won't come. You want me to follow you but you can't even show up when I need you to help me find Bonnie.

She was dead, lying for months in a sewer he could explain. "I brought her back to life."

Returning Bonnie to Mystic Falls would gain him one sweet natured blonde, but lose him the crown of New Orleans.

He tilts the bottle upward searching for the joy at having Caroline but all he feels is nothing.

There is a small knock at the door and Klaus fixes his mouth to bellow, go away, and her voice comes through the door with her heartbeat. "Okay, I was just checking on you," and he sprints to open the door before she leaves.

She is the only soul he doesn't want to keep out.

It was one thing to think of her as his weapon, as a negotiating device, to think of her in the abstract, it was another whole real, tangible and overwhelming thing to just think ofher, to hear her name and let recent memories ding, to see his brother's hand at her back and to have her standing in in the doorway wearing the shirt he had given her from his own back on the night she took her first breath.

"It was clean," Bonnie explains when she sees his eyes settle on her nightclothes. He nods and offers her the vodka bottle he was draining and she partakes and tells him that it's a half past two in the morning with a raised eyebrow. He laughs and says,"Nothings wrong." He lies.

Forgetting the very task he had been obsessed with all evening, he spins around in the room, pulling the drop cloths off of the couch and settee so she could decide where to sit but she bypasses him to stand in front of the canvas, his shirt's hem brushing over the firm roundness of her bare thighs, "I didn't know you painted."

He considers the violent beauty on the canvas, the oil colors of a flame engulfing the canvas and he ducks his head and begins to pick up brushes and cap off the paint tubes, "I don't very often."

He eyes her leaning in closer to the fresh painting and how the shirt rises just enough.

"It's beautiful. Why don't you do it all the time?"

And he takes the bottle from her hand to take a gulp, "Because I love it so much.

They finish another bottle of vodka together and she convinces him to show her how to paint.

"Like this," He whispers standing behind her, holding her hand, guiding the brush to follow the sketch he quickly drew for her to fill in with the red paint he scraped onto a palette. When they complete the lines with the brush without a mistake he can feel the joy emanating from her and he smiles into hair and impulsively pulls her closer to him, hugging her, only to suddenly let her go.

"How is everything with Elijah?" He says wishing there was another bottle to distract them as he sketches the next figure for her to paint

"Pretending comes natural to us," She says, admiring her work and turning to face him, "I have a confession to make."

Klaus face darkens.

And she backs up and finds the velvet settee, folding her legs under her, "I knew you painted."

He furrows his bow.

"At the farmhouse, I found your letters and I read them."

I know you want me to believe you're some kind of monster, but I see you.That's what she said before he killed the children's puppy to prove her otherwise. Was it the letters? Or his blood that he trickled on her corpse. She saw him dismember and still held his hand as he trapped them both in a rotting house. She twitched her fingers at him after killing wolves and didn't flinch when he kissed her.I see you.

Bonnie Bennett, the witch with a heart of gold, is the only one to see him and not issue an ultimatum on him, she didn't say I see you but tough shit or run away or say I can't.

"And what did you learn, love,"He says, preparing himself for anything but he's greeted with a wide grin that lights up the dim room.

"That you should do more of what you love," She says between her smile.

He will not save the impulse on a kill this time.

He doesn't say a word before he gets down on his knees in front of the couch, and the look of her surprise and brief fear on her face is enough for him to revel for the rest of the night. But he reaches for her, running his hands into her hair, cradling her skull with a slight pressure that makes her slowly open her thighs. And he leans forward over her lap and whispers, "Don't be afraid of me, Bonnie." And her hands find place on his shoulders and she runs them down his chest and over his stomach before he grips them into his and he tells he to take the shirt off.

"Stand. I want to see you." He commands.

She lifts up to do as he says, but he encircles her waist and kisses along her navel before nipping downward and she crumbles under the intensity of him.

"May I" he breathes into the tight space between her closed legs and he hears a small yes and it's all he needs to grip her ass and nuzzle the fleshy part of her right inner thigh, biting down without warning, his fangs embedded in her veins, causing her to stiffen and groan.

She tastes like Heaven.

It is her who finally grabs the back of his neck, her nails digging into skin, and crushes her lips over his bloody mouth, tasting herself and he presses her down onto her back, hitching her thighs on either side of his waist. He kisses her and he pulls the shirt from over her head to take her breasts into his mouth, while he rubs between her legs, breathing the word beautiful with her nipple between his teeth.

And there is no hesitation between them, they tangle themselves in each other, mouths and hands yearn to be on the other, until they are frenzied from arousal and blood, and Klaus undresses, pushing his jeans off while still draping her. Tonight will not be the night to save the impulse for the kill. Tonight he wants Bonnie and he sits up and roughly grabs Bonnie's thighs to slide her closer to him, to smell her, to bury himself in her, to get lost just in her.

You see me.

And I see you too.

He reaches for her while she's in that in-between place, sheets over her bare shoulders in a bed she did not fall asleep in but was carried to after she drifted in his arms. He pulls her to him, skin to to skin and presses his mouth against the nape of her neck, the warmth and heat of her body pressed against him. The pale light of morning is creeping underneath his bedroom curtain and he listens to her sigh and her breath return to the slow rise and fall of sleep. And he kisses her, folding her to him in his arms, and she tosses over to him with languid half-open lids and he smiles wide, and kisses her and hears himself say the words.I have something I want to tell you.

He has his own confession to make.

"I, " He starts, licking his lips and casting his eyes downward, "The reason…." "The reason, Bonnie," And he looks into her mossy green eyes filled with a rare warmth; there is so much love there that he swallows as he contemplates the end, how his words will douse that warmth, and her eyes and that love, that golden thread, that unlikely connection from her to him will snap.

He falters."I have to leave you," and a fresh look of concern clouds her face and he continues, "But I will be back so soon you won't even have time to notice I'm gone," He says convincing himself that this is all he ever wanted to tell her.

They kiss and run their fingers along each other's limbs until she falls back to sleep and he untangles himself to leave for Mystic Falls.

Bonnie waits uncomfortably for Antoinette to finish whispering with someone on the other side of the bedroom door. Antoinette's fingers are clasped around the side of the door, the only indicator that Antoinette will be right with her.

She straightens out the non-existent wrinkles in her white eyelet skirt, adjusting her legs on the bohemian styled pouf, searching for a position to relieve the soreness between her legs and the punctured wounds on her inner thigh.

"I have to leave you my love but I will be back before you notice I'm gone."

The evening in hindsight seems like a fever dream, skin flush and heartbeat racing, she can still feel his weight on her, his fangs scraping her collar, her blood on his tongue and the hot stretch of her skin of him entering her. Her breath ragged and shallow, his words, words she wanted to eat,Come for me, Bonnie.His arms wrapped around her, him letting her know that he had her, his face buried in her back, kisses and sleep, only to wake for him to tell her he was leaving her right away.

The ground is constantly moving and she just wants to have something stay still.

After coming to grips that Klaus had left, she stared at her breakfast tray all alone in her bedroom, then pulled herself together to shower and dress in another Elijah original, and climbed into the Range Rover with her fiancé'.

"Elijah, I know you well enough to know that even if I ask you, you probably won't tell me where he is but I would be remiss if I didn't, so where the hell did your brother go?"

Elijah squinted, opened his mouth and then closed it and then opened it again, "Let us focus on getting through this luncheon and then we can discuss the whereabouts of my brother."

The neighborhoods changed, ice cream color paint and magnolia trees with flowering gardens grew into overgrown weeds in empty parking lots and boarded up windows on commercial buildings with faded lettering. Over into Bywater, Bonnie questioned Elijah why the luncheon was necessary.

"We will need the witches on our side when we remove Marcel which should be an easy alliance as they have suffered under his edict, forbidding magic," He said looking over at Bonnie," But they will want the city for themselves after he's gone which is why you and I have to position ourselves as allies to prevent that from happening."

"More pretending."

He nodded, "If they ask you to perform any magic. Don't. We don't want to flaunt any insubordination of Marcel's laws to give him cause to doubt our intentions when he already doubts our intentions."

Upon her and Elijah's arrival to the luncheon, she realized this lunch was not to be the silver candlestick holders and engraved salad forks she had imagined when Elijah was pointing out that they needed to bring a bottle of wine and some freshly cut flowers as to not to show up as rude guests empty handed.

The front lawn was alive with small kids running in and out of an inflatable bouncy castle and their mamas yelling at them to go eat because they were not stopping to get food on the way home, young men and old playing dominoes on a metal card table were boisterous and jovial, calling one another out for their horrible play, the driveway was being used as an outside kitchen, folding tables linked one after another full of glass bowls and aluminum trays of food: crawfish, potatoes and corn, grilled boudin links and sausage, dirty rice and barbecued chicken. And the aunties and great aunties talking back and forth about what dessert they made, tea cakes and seven-up bundts littered the minimal space around the savory. Bonnie even spotted a deejay, who had posted up on the side of the house in the shade, taking a break to eat the plate two kids delivered to him without dropping.

Elijah held the roses and the red wine and Bonnie told one of the elderly ladies she had remembered from the funeral that they had come to meet with Antoinette.

"Antoinette, she's here," a teen-aged girl yelled through the screen door into the shadowy house, "And she brought the white boy with her."

She overhears Antoinette tell someone, "Give him to me," and Bonnie squares her shoulders while she glances over at Antoinette's altar, the low wooden table and all of its contents: crystals and statuettes, rosaries crafted from yellow yarn and metal ankhs, sage wands and palo santo sticks, a bowl of water and a bowl of salt, a hot pink plastic basket of full of oranges, and half of a bottle of honey, crinkled and pristine photos of faces, some smiling, some a straight line and in every shade of soil from which the first man had come, and a blue glass vase, smack in the middle, full of sunflowers.

Antoinette emerges, finally, holding a grinning toddler with almond shaped eyes, "This little man is Elery." Antoinette says brightly, hitching the baby on to her hip and smothering him with kisses, "His mama had to leave for work so I told her just leave him with me so we can have some fun, isn't that right Elery, we gonna have fun," She says to the kid who nods profusely and swings his legs to be placed down on the floor.

Bonnie expected the same Antoinette from the funeral, the militant minded young woman ready to avenge the injustices against her family, the one who grabbed the attention of her and the vampires next to her with her fiery speech and matriarchal tone, the one who Bonnie thought would have gladly returned her to whatever afterlife in exchange for her Mama T.

But this Antoinette is barefoot in a sundress, sandy curls free and flowing, laughing and nuzzling a baby and beaming down at hug Bonnie like she is her long lost relative.

"I love your altar, "Bonnie says quickly, unnerved by Elery's chubby finger demands for her to hand him the colorful toy keys on the edge of the altar, "I wish I had one at my house."

Antoinette forehead furrows and her mouth downturns, "I'm really, really surprised to hear you don't have one."

Bonnie bites the edge of her lip looking over the many items laid out with care, longing to touch each one and ask her questions. "I lost a lot of things when I died, so I have to start over." She says answering as honestly as she could, "I will have one again though."

Antoinette forehead softens and she purses her lips, "Gimme a week and I'll have a special charm for your altar, a lil something something to get you started."

"Is Elery yours?" Bonnie starts, giving the keys back to the toddler who has made a game of placing them onto her skirt and waiting for her to give them back to him.

"My brother's baby. Do you have any siblings?"

"No, I'm an only child." Bonnie answers, "But I always wanted a sister."

Antoinette grins and bobs her head up and down emphatically, "Me too, when my Mama was pregnant I remember going to church asking for it to please be a sister, I even picked out a name, but here came Marc," She slides down from the bed to sit cross-legged on the floor, pulling Elery into her lap, "That's Marc there." And Bonnie notices the glossy memorial program, a young man with a colgate smile in the on the front with his arms draped around his big sister, Antoinette.

"He was killed about a block from here, outside Tweety's convenient store and my mom, she died of a broken heart two months after." Antoinette states without emotion.

Bonnie doesn't know what to say so she says what her heart wants to say, "I'm so sorry, Antoinette."

There are small crystal-like tears wanting to spill from Antoinette eyes but she blinks and they gather into her eyelashes, "Let's talk about something else, like your wedding, I didn't bring you back here to talk about all this on our first hang-out."

"Um, we were thinking late fall right before Thanksgiving," Bonnie spits out the practiced lie feeling herself immediately catapulted from the kinship she is experiencing with Antoinette, "I'm not that involved in the minute details, I don't know if you know my fiancé', but he's way more equipped to put together a wedding than I am."

"He is too fly."

Both girls crack into giggles and Elery joins.

Someone knocks and brings them plates of crawfish and a six-pack of ice cold Abita beers, and the girls eat and speak of lighter things, and Bonnie lets her shoulders drop, and slides down to sit on the carpet, cross-legged on the floor, mussing up her eyelet skirt, drinking beers and laughing and forgetting that she is supposed to be infiltrating and not actually befriending. And with each beer and laugh she shares with Antoinette, she wants to tell her that she thinks whatever in love is supposed to feel like that she feels it, and it isn't for the dashing vampire in the kitchen but for his brother, and that she doesn't remember anything before she died because she doesn't have any memories, and she wants to ask her what she thinks about her lover leaving her without a damn word about where the hell he was going.

But Elijah's voice booms through the bedroom room door alerting them that Bonnie and he are scheduled to meet with the wedding planner in an hour.

Bonnie rises and drunkenly giggles, "I have to go," and Antoinette agrees but stops her before she leaves the room.

"I'm not gonna' lie to you, Bonnie. Some of us feel some type of way about losing Mama T and getting you, and I can say that I was definitely one of them but after speaking with you now, I don't feel that way anymore. My auntie knew what she was doing and she wouldn't have did what she did without good reason, and I can see now that you are the real deal."

"The real deal?"

"Yeah," She says with a big open smile, "The one we've been waiting for."

"She's dead."

This was the consensus upon his arrival to Mystic Falls. Red-rimmed eyes. Caroline, Elena, Jeremy and Stefan.

Damon wouldn't believe what they had found down in the sewer and had hopped into his excuse of a classic car and peeled off into the night.

"No tears for a freaking dress."

Klaus was only sad that he didn't even get a chance to have them traipse around the world looking for their friend.

Instead of expert tracker of lost persons his role was switched to caretaker of fledgling vampires, a teenaged human and a former ripper.

They didn't make much noise about him being there; grief has a way of slumping your shoulders and blurring your eyes from whatever grudge you held before your best friend died.

Caroline glued her head to his shoulder. His shirt wet with tears.

Stefan, that somber martyr, only raised an eyebrow once at him, but closed his mouth when Caroline expressed that she was glad he had finally come.

But even as he stood up straight so Caroline could lean on him, and even though he made the blood bag runs and made sure the teenager didn't drown in Damon's liquor cabinet, he was a still outsider.

In the late-night huddles in the Salvatore living room, he hung back, a witness to their stories and their pain.

"I wrote the postcards because she asked me to, and then one day she was just gone…"

He was never asked to tell a memory. And rightfully so. He wasn't in mourning. He hadn't known their Bonnie. He was this Bonnie's antagonist, her villain, her reason to shake her fist to the sky.

In the shadows of the boardinghouse living room, he was the listener. Yes, he could have waited for Caroline at the Mikaelson mansion, or even offered to track down the eldest Salvatore so he wouldn't miss the memorial they were planning, but instead he haunted the periphery of their bonds with Bonnie. He listened in on their tales of the witch.

It was Caroline who finally noticed him mesmerized by their reminiscing, and she smiled with crimson streaked cheeks, and said, "I wish you had known Bonnie. You would have loved her too."

Caroline is with Elena at the Gilbert's working on the contact list for Bonnie's memorial which gives him some rare time alone.

A moment to himself.

He thinks about calling her.

Thinks about calling up the dead.

He calls Elijah instead.

And his brother updates him on the little witch's day to day: her frequenting her new friend Antoinette's, her ravenous thirst for information on their mother, and their frequent outings with Marcel.

"What?"

"We have a fortuitous gain in this ruse because it seems he has taken a liking to Bonnie."

The phone is silent as Elijah waits for Klaus to rejoice to that bit of news, but Klaus clears his throat and advises him that with such a close proximity to his former protégé that it should not be long before the city is returned to its rightful owner.

"I have an old acquaintance visiting and Bonnie and I think we may have the means to end him without much bloodshed," Elijah advises. "And Niklaus, I trust that you understand with Marcel trusting us in his circle again that your presence here will only upset that harmony," Elijah states as more of a demand than a suggestion."

"I really don't think I can do this," Caroline says, opening up a bottle of pinot noir and pouring herself a glass to the brim, "I really wish Elena could do this part by herself."

It only took a week and half to plan Bonnie's memorial and tomorrow was to be the big day. Caroline had nervously thrown out that he could leave, that he had done more than enough for her and she knew he had to get back to being the bane of someone's existence. But Klaus assured her he wanted to stay. He knew she thought it was because of his affection for her, and that was partially true, but more so, he wanted to make sure they buried the witch; that it gave them closure.

Caroline's hand shakes as she hands him the crumpled piece of paper. A speech about Bonnie.

Quickly scanning her cursive, Klaus reads a story about a teddy bear named Ms. Cuddles that belonged to Bonnie, and how in an eight-year-old jealous rage, Caroline had stolen the stuffed animal from Bonnie and buried it in the woods behind their homes, until wrecked with guilt she had laid down M from Bonnie's porch to the crime scene. But the birds ate the candy and she had to confess everything on her own to her friend, and true to form, Bonnie accepted her apology and told Caroline that she understood and she didn't stop once from being Caroline's friend. That's the kind of friend Bonnie Bennett was.

Klaus eyes the blonde, feeling a righteous indignation on behalf of an eight-year-old Bonnie, but also wondering if some of that Bonnie is still in there.

She scratches out the story calling it stupid when he hands the paper back, but Klaus fills her glass again and tells her not to nix it.

"It's honest."

It is getting late and prior to this evening, Caroline had a routine of leaving him to spend her nights in a bed with a distraught Elena back at the Gilbert's. But Elena and Stefan are making a last-ditch effort to look for Damon before the morning.

"They should let him be. We all are getting through this in our own way," She says running her fingers though her hair, and glancing over at Klaus who had told her that she was welcome to stay the night.

Caroline fidgets and rocks a little on the balls of her feet, grateful for Klaus and anticipating Klaus, the Klaus who would mention her leaving with him after this was all over, the Klaus who would kiss her passionately and say that this was the time for him to be her last, the Klaus whodidn'tconstantly reach for his phone and look after her like a big brother.

Klaus folds up her crumpled speech and tells her he has heard enough about Bonnie from everyone to help her write it. She will have a speech in the morning.

She lingers enough for him to ask her if she needs anything.

"You've changed." She says with a sad smile.

Shaking his head, he picks up the dirty wine glasses, "You're tired, Caroline."

And in the near three weeks he has been there she can finally see what she couldn't when he arrived.

With her blue eyes staring him down, he sets the glasses down and reaches for her cold hand, leading her back to the couch.

"Does she know who you really are?"

In the end he tells her there wasn't someone else but that they weren't right for one another and she agrees.

At least that is what she tells herself when she was alone with her head against the tear stained pillow.

He can't sleep. He never really needed much of it over the years, preferring to nap whenever he felt that pull; it would have been a death wish to have had a routine that required him to lay comatose for a stretch of time. His enemies would have loved that. Kill him while he's sleeping. He laughs at the absurdity of such a finish, it would have been completely beneath him and a pitiful way to exit this earth.

Most modern vampires still clung to their human ways, falling asleep at night, keeping up some internal clock they no longer had. The old ones not so much; they understood that the night belonged to them. But, there were always outliers, like the two star-crossed lovers who had slept as he burned their home to the ground.

"If you want me to stop seeing Rebekah, I will. But You have to tell me why, am I not good enough for this family?"

Klaus eyes the time on his watch and listens to Caroline finally drift to sleep from his position on the couch in the parlour of the Mikaelson Mansion.

He would be lying if he said the current state of affairs for him was not bizarre. For earlier, there had been the Caroline with the open eyes and a heart slightly ajar, ready for him, ready to try to be with him in a way he had obsessed over for so long. (But you could only see her and hear her voice when Caroline talked.)And in New Orleans, his brother and his witch(Elijah spoke of her differently, how many times did he have to say we)they were preparing to kill his nemesis without so much as a detail given to him.(Only the father can kill the son.)

Stuffing the speech into his pocket, Klaus breaks out of the mansion and into the evening air.

He can write about her anywhere, really. But there is something poetic about being in her bed and amongst her things, it's here he will commune with the witch.

The house looks different or maybe it is him.

Last time he was here, he was too single-focused, too determined, too anxious that he might not find her body.

This time around, he was going to take his deliberate time.

He left Caroline to finish up her speech and look for that damned stuffed animal. A parting gift to give her the gumption she needs to speak tomorrow.

Closing the unlocked door behind him all the magic he wants from being in Bonnie's former home is cut short.

Someone is here.

Her bedroom is not like how he remembers it. Obsessive-compulsively arranged and organized. Now it is in ruins. Ransacked. Stripped. It has been torn apart from the ceiling to the carpet, nothing has been left untouched, even the very stuffing from the mattress and pillows has been emptied out. Pages and pages and empty envelopes are padding the floor, her college acceptance letters stacked in the trash, slashes of pictures and torn-off pages from her journals are tacked onto the wall with the many postcards she didn't write. There was some sort of beautiful mind-esque rendering of a mental map being played out on Bonnie's scuffed bedroom wall.

And a tall dark vampire is pouring over the details, his finger moving from a picture of Bonnie with her Grams to a postcard in the shape of Texas.

"I heard you were in town for Blondie, but I didn't believe it," Damon starts with his leather-clad back turned to the hybrid, "But really, when I think about it, it's a good play to make for her to finally give you some pussy," The eldest Salvatore says never breaking from examining his work and the road map of the United States splayed open in front of him. "What are you doing here, Klaus," Damon asks with a dark laugh in disbelief.

I am posed to ask you the same thing.

Klaus does not feel like bantering with Damon. He would much rather snap his neck.

The hybrid steps over pages of Bonnie's diary and catches a mention of his name on the floor as he takes a seat on the edge of her bed, "You finally decided to come and mourn your friend," He states, picking up the page to read about her helping his horror of a mother.

Damon picks up a red marker and circles Austin and puts a question mark next to Houston, "Does it look like I'm mourning?" He glares at Klaus, the maniacal stare that lets Klaus know that it was premature of him to believe that Mystic Falls would have closure.

"Seriously, Klaus, what are you doing, of all places, in Bonnie's bedroom."

Klaus flicks the torn page and raises his hands in faux peace, "Caroline is having jitters about her eulogy, mate. I thought it might help if I brought her the stuffed animal Bonnie had when they were kids. She references it in her speech. A Ms. Cuddles." He quickly scans the room for the toy and notices there are many stuffed bears strewn about.

Damon shakes his incredulous head as he continues to marker more cities, "Bon-Bon hated you. You ain't taking anything from her room, brother. Sorry." He finishes with a satisfied smile.

Yeah, mate. She hates me enough to lay down and open herself to me.

Klaus stretches his mouth into a deadly smile, "I don't remember the witch having particularly fond feelings for you either. If I do recall correctly she did leave you hanging in my parlour to be tortured by my sister."

Damon swishes his mouth to the side, his eyes narrowing on the hybrid, and then he stands so abruptly that it knocks the desk chair backwards, and he walks across the span of the cluttered floor and pulls up a light brown bear by its tattered ear and tosses it on to the bed.

"I take with all of this, "Klaus says nodding his head toward the wall, "You will not be memorializing Bonnie Bennett tomorrow morning with your friends and family."

The less-interesting Salvatore, pops the "p" when he says nope. "They gave up, "Damon spits, disgusted, "Not I. No, not the one who she let hang and get drained by your sister as you stated earlier. You can tell Blondie this in the morning when she's wondering why I'm not sitting in the front pew."

"Tell her what, Damon?"

And Damon faces Klaus with a look like you really want to know, you really want to know how close I am to blowing up all of your plans?

"After getting door and door slammed in my fucking face, I found a witch, a Bennett one, but a fucking distant one. And after wearing them down from that whole, 'I don't work with vampires.' I got them to do their woo-woo and peek on the other side and turns out," He slaps his hands, "The witch ain't there." He says with pride not noticing that Klaus is eyeing the desk chair's legs to form a stake.

Treading lightly in his speech and actions, Klaus flashes a look of practiced concern, and softens his words to a near whisper, "Damon. I hate to be the bearer of truth, I can see you clearly care about her, but she is not on the other side because she is dead."

Damon narrows his eyes and states without question, "She's alive, brother."

Klaus stills the imperceptible shake of his hand to reach for Damon's neck. And he swallows hard and exhales air he doesn't need. He is unbothered. Calm. He is bored at the news over the status of an inconsequential witch who had frequently attempted to kill him.

"How do you know this for sure, what evidence do you have." Klaus asks, his question more aggressive than he intended, his voice rising a bit more than he wanted.

Kill him.

Pull out his heart.

Leave a broody pool of Salvatore on Bonnie's carpet.

Damon sighs and ducks his head down, "I don't have any," he says frustrated, "I just…" He starts picking up another postcard and flipping it over to the forged handwriting, "She just can't go that easy."

The limo car door slams behind Bonnie and she postures herself onto the leather seat opposite her vampire companion, ignoring his gaze.

She is the one everyone wants to say goodbye to; the one after the party that everyone wants to hug and kiss, her apple cheeks wet with kisses. Even Marcel dawdles near the limousine, telling little stories and jokes to hear Bonnie laugh while the dark-haired vampire waits in the shadows of the car.

It was well past the witching hour and the couple had yet again ended a night of drinking and revelry (as what Elijah calls it) as the glamorous hangers-on to the King of New Orleans.

Elijah requests that the driver raise the divider and the driver complies, the black bullet-proof glass rising as Bonnie smiles a thank you before the driver disappears.

She shoots a scowl at Elijah, "Couldn't you tell I was ready to go?"

Another quarrel.

It seemed like whenever they had to encounter Marcel there was to be a fight immediately after.

Elijah slides out of his jacket and begins to un-cuff his sleeves, "Yes, of course I did." He states receiving another death stare from the witch, "And if it were up to me then we would have gone home hours ago, but as you are well aware, Bonnie, we are obligated to accommodate our host."

Bonnie wraps her arms around herself, the long velvet sleeves catching tears that were silently sliding down her face.

A crisp linen handkerchief finds its way onto her lap and she crushes it in her hands. "I hate him."

"I know you do, and if I had known what he had planned for those witches then I would have never accepted his invitation. And if it is any consolation, he at the very least let them live."

She snorts, "Well there's that." She wrings the small piece of fabric in her hands, staring out the window, thinking of those girls he lined up in the ballroom and how she couldn't save them.

"Stop it." She whispers catching his solemn likeness in the glass. "Stop staring at me like you feel what I feel when you don't."

There is a sigh behind her and then the dip of the leather as Elijah moves to be near her, but not too near, never too near.

"I realize you do not know me as intimately as you may think you know Antoinette, or even Niklaus, but I assure you, I am heartbroken." He says softly to the back of Bonnie's head.

She's pissed but she doesn't want to rehash this argument with Elijah.

Anger is rolling through her veins for having followed his lead.

What about the witches?

Elijah's plan was reasonable, he lectured that progress should be incremental if it is to be lasting. He persuaded her that they needed time to set up a monarchy that would be more inclusive of New Orleans's magical subjects.

But after witnessing what she had seen in the ballroom, the witches' screams and eyes pleading, she thinks of Antoinette's words.

Ain't no negotiating with a vampire, the only thing they understand is a stake.

She tries to hold back the fresh tears but her shoulders give her away and vibrate with her silent sob, and she is so damn grateful that Elijah is so proper because if he touches her she will have to feel the weight of her betrayal.

"He's a monster."

"He was not always a monster, he was actually quite a compassionate and precocious young man before we ruined him," Elijah's voice trailing in remembrance of a young Marcel who followed him around the estate wanting him to teach him a verse or a piece of music. "Besides, you and I both know that if Niklaus were King those girls would be dead."

She bristles at his comment, fixes her eyes on the street lights.

Elijah can barely stifle his amusement, "Oh, come now, I know you adore my brother, and I am pledged to him for the eternity of my life, but let us not play dumb abo -."

She cuts him off, whipping her head around to glare at him, "I know who Klaus is."

Elijah slightly bows his head, "Good. He needs someone like you to know him," He says smoothly, staring into the darkness of her eyes. And even though he knows first-hand the devastation that can come from loving anyone or thing that Niklaus covets for himself, he presses his thumb at a wet, tear-stained spot on her cheek.

He was not completely lying when he told her on that first night that he wanted to be some kind of friend to her.

"After tomorrow night you will not have to subject yourself to one Marcel Gerard ever again," He assures her as if that fact should be enough to calm her down.

The limo pulls onto the cobblestone driveway and the driver opens the door and she bypasses his outstretched hand.

And Elijah's calls out to her, asking her to wait.

She is steps ahead of the vampire. She doesn't want to talk. She wants to be left alone. She wants to disappear into the confinement of her bedroom. She wants to hide her crumbling face behind a shower curtain.

Her heels clack against the marble and then his voice hits her back before she escapes up the spiraled stairs.

"Have you considered the possibility Marcel unnerves you because he reminds you of Klaus,"

Behind a closed bedroom door. Behind a locked bathroom door. Behind a drawn shower curtain.

Bonnie doesn't cry.

The water stings and burns her fingers as it sprays over her hands, scrubbing and scrubbing at her blistering skin.

There were five girls.

Fresh faced and Fearful.

Someone had dressed them in white.

Flowers adorned their heads.

"The only blood fit for the Gods." Marcel had laughed.

Vampires took turns.

And those white gowns were ruined with red.

She wraps herself in a bath towel and avoids the mirror.

Go head, do it, have a good look at yourself.

She turns her back and flicks the switch and opens the door to the slow creep of morning crawling through her balcony doors.

The world will no longer be blue.

Her bedroom is quiet and still but her skin prickles and she notices in the corner, seated in the leather club chair, the outline of his figure, the shadows across his face, and the heavy footfall of his boots as he closes the space between them.

"Have you missed me, love?" He drawls, towering over her, making her want nothing more than to crawl onto his lap and affirm with a full-throated 'Yes'.

She drops the towel and slides her arms up over his henley and around his neck, tilting her chin upward so he can see her, and his jaw visibly tightens as she offers him a small broken smile when his eyebrow raises.

"Make it go away," she whispers, pulling him down to her, mouth over mouth, possessing what she believes is hers, unraveling into their kiss that deepens and deepens until she finds it hard to breathe.

Wrapped in his arms, she knows who she is. Pain and confusion drain out and the pent-up charge of magic flows unobstructed. The bedroom lights flicker around them; the balcony doors fling wide open.

Delight.

That is what she sees on his face when he breaks the kiss to comment on the T.V. flipping through channel after channel on its own.

Shaking her head at his enjoyment of her simple parlor tricks, she presses her lips together in a soft shush of air, and the balcony doors slam shut, the flickering lights go dark and the channel flipping stops.

It was not that long ago, he remarks, his sensuous mouth stretched into an impish grin.

She rolls her eyes and he crowds her until the back of her knees bump into the bed. Green eyes wide with hunger, she gazes at the rugged face and ruffled hair that appears out from under the pulled over shirt, and for a breath, she thinks of those memories, those memories that she was told by a witch that were going to come back one day; she doesn't want them, she has her own, and they are striking and haunting, and they consist of Klaus staring down at her.

She lays down for him.

Hands on her waist, he pulls her down to the edge of the bed, thighs resting on either side of his jeans. His fingertips lightly brush up her legs then knead down her thigh, and she sighs, arching her back from his fingers that glide over her brown skin, and then slip into her. Her breath is rapid, her heartbeat quick and timed to his every thrust. And when he can feel the pulsating heat tighten and flutter around his fingers he drops to his knees to kiss her there until it all goes away.

"Where were you?"

She is all ragdoll limbs, languid arms and legs, her head lolls forward as he grips her waist, steadying her on top of him. Her dark hair shrouds them both, the tendrils gracing his shoulders, and he steals a kiss before he tells her with ease that he was away tying up loose ends.

She assumes the tying of loose ends is related to their coup so it suffices for the time being. She is exhausted and spent and does not feel like imagining what he did to tie up those loose ends.

"I fought with your brother, "She says, shifting her weight to fall on the side of Klaus, "And I hate fighting with Elijah, he tries so hard," She confesses softly thinking of the many arguments she has had with the eldest Mikaelson over the weeks, but also of his display of patience and consistent concern even when she threatened to raze the house.

Side by side, eye to eye, he brushes her hair from her face, "Why do you feel so strongly?" He says curiously, the space between his eyes creased, his eyes narrowed and piercing.

She recounts the near draining of the five witches. Her voice is small when she tells him she stood among the audience, Marcel's loyalists, a collection of devoted vampires and sycophantic witches, indiscernible among them, a blank face in the crowd when the girls screamed.

"They weren't rebels, they hadn't broken any of his stupid laws, but he tortured them, "Her voice breaks, "Just because he can."

Her hot cheek is pressed against his cold chest, the shell of her ear flush against him, mesmerized by the silence.

His fingers are under the veil of her hair, caressing the nape of her neck, "I am taking you away."

And she smiles, feeling each word as if she had spoken.

"Where will we go?" She asks, playing along, thinking he is humoring her because she is a mess of emotions, and she slides her leg over him, and offers up a suggestion before he answers, "I would like to be near the sea."

BKBKBKBK

They make love.

Mouth parted, she moans. He is behind her, pushing and pulling her the way he wants, his fingers embedded in the flesh at her hips. Cold lips are at the back of her neck; she moves along with him, slowly, slowly now; he wants to fuck her slow.

There are kisses at her nape, and then the sudden scrape of his fangs, and she cannot take any more.

Do it.

Her blood runs thick into his mouth when she comes.

The day is here.

She will sleep now.

And before she descends, before the moment slips away, before he just might disappear,again

I love you.

And she closes her eyes.