Happy Holidays, swirlsofblue!
Title: what they had made
Recipient: swirlsofblue
Author: sunsetdawn20
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Klaus/Stefan, Damon, Elijah, some Finn and Rebekkah
Word Count:2.247
Warnings: AU, post-apocaliptic world, character death
Summary: This is an AU story set in a future where human's have died out, slavery is commonplace, and the Mikaelson family rules the world. And Klaus own Stefan.
The car is driving slowly, not to attract too much attention, but fast enough to make a hasty escape should things get messy. There are some scrawny, dirty-looking children running with them, pounding on the thick, black windows of the bulletproof car but most kids are too afraid to even come close. They hide behind burned out cars and inside roofless ruins of houses. Their white little faces are almost black from neglect, and fear renders their eyes age-old and frightening. Klaus fights the urge to look away. Even though the sight sickens him somehow he feels he has no right to. He’s not like Finn, who can drive past these children without even noticing, mind firmly lodged in figures and demands and cold hard numbers. No. This is a world of their creation and Klaus is not cowardly enough to disown it.
He remembers the day perfectly when the first unsettling news came. First in form of facts and figures and numbers on Finn’s laptop screen. Norway. Childbirth rates. Turnings. Deaths. Out of proportion but manageable, Finn said. And Klaus was too preoccupied with gasping for air in Mikael’s shadow to even give a damn. None of them noticed the signs in time, and those who did were casually ignored. Ten years later the first breeding colony was set up in Texas but by then it was too late. All over the world their kind started herding humans into reserves specially built for them, equipped with all the high-tech machinery and all the most expensive medicine to keep them alive as long as possible. In a way it was ironic, Klaus remembers the last ever human US President to have said in his abdication speech, that humans, the tyrants of the Earth and the shameless exploiters of its natural resources had now become such resources rapidly used up. Dying.
Soon a ban on hunting was issued and those who were found guilty of murdering humans faced the direst of consequences. Switzerland was turned into a prison-country for those who could not be trusted with their urges, and the borders were guarded day and night. Blood-rationing was introduced and panicked riots were crushed. Despite the best efforts of control, human trafficking and black-market blood was booming. Even the obvious dangers, after it had been made public that a small but hardy resistance was lacing blood with vervaine and bringing it into circulation, couldn’t stop vampires all over the world from getting human blood at any cost. They were all slowly starving and there was only one way of survival. And those who saw the path and weren’t afraid (or too moral) to take it, became the rules of the world. Mikael’s family had been the first all those centuries ago and they were the firsts when it came to the new rule. They turned cannibal on their own kind. Those who refused had no chance. Once the last human died vampires that refused to slaughter other vampires started dropping like flies.
This scrap-city they are driving through now is the very embodiment of the divide between those vampires who refuse to feed on their own blood and those who are willing to survive at any cost. Their “morality”, or simply stupidity, in Klaus’ mind, has rendered them cattle, nothing more. Slaves to those who are brave enough to change the world. And then there are vampires like Damon and Klaus just doesn’t get it. It’s been a longstanding arrangement, over twenty years now. Damon, for no apparent reason apart from the fact that he never does what people expect him to do, became the self-proclaimed saviour of this little colony in the middle of nowhere. He made a deal with Mikael about supplying vampire blood manipulated in taste and texture so it could pass as human in exchange for whatever they had to trade at the time. It was ridiculous in a way but somehow admirable to Klaus, the way Damon was hell bent to protect his chosen home and its inhabitants even if that meant deceiving them into doing the very thing they despised most and were fighting against. It took guts and Klaus has always admired that.
The car stops at the rundown building that once used to be a magnificent mansion but now is nothing more than a few walls and water-repellent canvas strung out over the most important living areas. Damon still invites them in like it’s a bloody palace and his grin is wide despite the hunger so obvious in his pallid skin. Klaus briefly glances at the somewhat tattered leather jacket Damon is wearing and he suppresses a smile. Both he and Finn decline taking place in the dusty old armchair that once must have been worth a fortune but Damon is unfazed by that, it’s almost ritual by now. He sprawls in one of the armchairs, gobbles whiskey down as if it was the one thing keeping his very bones together, and starts discussing rates and delivery dates with Finn in an almost bored tone as if he was the one with the ace up his sleeves.
Klaus zones out, he’s bored by business, hates that Mikael makes him accompany Finn more and more these days, as if he was hoping Finn’s presence could straighten Klaus out somehow. In every possible sense of the word. Klaus suppresses a sneer and walks to the fireplace that hasn’t seen fire in at least a decade. On the dusty mantelpiece, or what’s left of it, there’s a single photograph of Damon and his brother and Klaus feels a surge of jealousy at their carefree smiles. It’s ridiculous and foolish, Stefan is his, only his. Has been for almost fifteen years now, and yet...
“How is he?” Damon’s voice suddenly shakes Klaus out of his thoughts. He looks around and sees that Finn has already left and Damon is standing close, the grin completely gone from his face. He seems tense and Klaus thinks he understands, he would be too if another vampire owned Rebekkah.
“Better than you, by the looks of it,” Klaus says casually and starts after Finn, but Damon grips his arm tighter than should be possible in the circumstances.
“Just...” he says sharply. “Just make sure he doesn’t get himself killed, ok? Just one more week.”
“What makes you so sure he will want to return?” Klaus sneers but there’s tightness in his chest as he wrenches his arm out of Damon’s grasp and marches out of the ruins of the house. He wishes he could be as certain of Stefan’s decision as he keeps pretending to be.
On the way home, while Finn is making phone calls to Mikael and suppliers and all sorts of important people, Klaus just keeps staring out of the car, replaying that day fifteen years ago. That visit was supposed to be like this one, a fast negotiation, business done. But Damon and Stefan had nothing to trade at the time and too many vampires going mad with hunger. That was the first and only time Klaus was allowed to go alone, the deal he struck with them was later deemed unacceptable and unfavourable by Mikael. Klaus admits, at least to himself, that he was selfish that day, had no consideration for the family business, only his own wants, but he hasn’t regretted it. Every single day of the last fifteen years with Stefan as his personal slave has been worth Mikael’s ever-growing contempt. But in a week the agreed time is up and Stefan will have to make a decision. A decision Klaus doesn’t want to have to compel.
-------------
Well trained by now, Stefan kneels in the characteristic posture of the slaves the moment Klaus enters the room. His head is bowed, his right arm outstretched, wrist exposed. Hunger surges in Klaus at the tantalising sight but another kind of need is weighing on him heavier already. He roughly pulls Stefan to his feet and captures his mouth in a raw, yearning kiss. Stefan leans into the contact with his whole body and more than anything Klaus wishes he could know for certain that that means something, everything.
They fall on the couch in a tangle of limbs. Stefan instinctively wraps his legs around Klaus and gasps at the friction between their cocks. Klaus moans into Stefan’s mouth and bites down on Stefan’s lips, drawing a few drops of precious blood. His fingers almost unconsciously trace the line of the witch-made collar that every slave must wear and can be tracked by and it almost feels impossible that in a week it will be gone. The thought makes Klaus tense like in the grip of a nightmare, a motion Stefan knows well, and he looks up at Klaus questioningly, with a hint of worry. But Klaus just shakes his head and leans in for another kiss.
He’s desperate and needy today but masks it as raw want and passion and hopes Stefan doesn’t know him well enough yet to know the difference. And if later, wrapped around Stefan’s sated, peacefully sleeping body, Klaus whispers “Please, don’t ever leave me” into the ears of his lover, his slave, his friend - well, that means nothing at all as long as no one’s there to hear it.
----------------
Elijah doesn’t ask if he’s alright. He never had to, he just always knew.
They are tasting a new brand of vampire blood to be put on the market by their family in Elijah’s penthouse suite in what used to be L.A. but has long ago been turned into a city-sized blood-factory. Elijah lives here and oversees every part of production from the choosing of the right vampires to be drained completely down to the bottling process. It’s his punishment for having opposed Mikael at the founding of the family business. No one opposes Mikael, not even his favourite son. Elijah bears marks of that lesson even now. His left eye is forever blind, maimed, burned from a witch-made branding-iron that prevents healing and Mikael uses to punish those who disappoint him most. Klaus has escaped it so far, but he knows that’s meant to be the worst humiliation of all, he’s not even worthy of Mikael’s loathing anymore.
“Did you ask about Stefan’s decision?” Elijah asks, turning his good eye on Klaus.
Klaus is quiet for a few moments.
“We don’t speak of that.”
“Maybe it’s time,” Elijah says quietly. “Something is stirring.”
He doesn’t explain what he means by that.
---------------
Klaus wakes in the middle of the night and first doesn’t know why. He shifts closer to Stefan and the familiar scent of his friend soothes him. He’s almost about to drift back to sleep when a scream rips through the night. Rebekkah. Klaus freezes, sits up in bed and turns to wake Stefan but finds that Stefan is already awake, watching him with an unreadable look. Klaus shifts to get out of bed but Stefan grabs him to make him stay.
“I have to see if she’s ok,” Klaus hisses angrily, but Stefan doesn’t let him go.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” he says. “It’s over.”
“What are you talking about?”
Before Stefan could reply the door bursts open and it distracts Klaus long enough for Stefan to pin him against the wall and plunge his hand right into Klaus’ chest, gripping his heart. Klaus freezes and can’t move, from the corner of his eyes he recognizes Damon in the man who is entering the room through the blown up door.
“Sorry to crash the party,” he sneers. “Thought you should know, as we speak your whole family is being hunted down, the slaves freed, etcetera, etcetera, you know the drill.”
Klaus is barely listening, the words don’t even truly register in his brain, he’s too focused on the way Stefan is quite literally holding his heart in the palm of his hand. It somehow seems fitting.
“I see...” he gasps for air, having to force his words through the haze of pain. “So this is your... choice...”
Stefan doesn’t answer.
“You didn’t think he would choose you, did you?” Damon smirks. “Now he’s taking his freedom back.”
Klaus lets out a breathless, bitter chuckle.
“He doesn’t know... does he?” he asks Stefan and the flash of guilt across Stefan’s face is answer enough. Klaus doesn’t have to turn to be able to picture the confused frown on Damon’s face. Stefan shifts as if trying to figure out a way to stop Klaus from betraying his secret to Damon. But Klaus is not generous enough to keep silent.
“If he kills me...” he forces out. “He dies too.”
“What the fuck is he talking about, Stefan?” Damon sounds irritated.
Stefan clenches his teeth, hesitates. “The collar...” he says. “If I kill my Master it kills me.”
There’s a long moment of silence in the room before Damon takes a step forward. “Ok, baby bro, don’t be stupid now. Let me...”
“No,” Stefan interrupts his brother and casts him a brief apologetic look before locking eyes with Klaus again. “No,” he repeats quietly.
Then he leans in and captures Klaus’ lips in a slow, deep, desperate kiss. Klaus can’t help but give into it. His whole world narrows down to the combined, confusing sensations of Stefan’s tongue in his mouth and Stefan’s body pressed tight against him and Stefan’s fingers tracing the line of his jaw and Stefan’s hand around his heart and Stefan just pulling...
Recipient: swirlsofblue
Author: sunsetdawn20
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Klaus/Stefan, Damon, Elijah, some Finn and Rebekkah
Word Count:2.247
Warnings: AU, post-apocaliptic world, character death
Summary: This is an AU story set in a future where human's have died out, slavery is commonplace, and the Mikaelson family rules the world. And Klaus own Stefan.
The car is driving slowly, not to attract too much attention, but fast enough to make a hasty escape should things get messy. There are some scrawny, dirty-looking children running with them, pounding on the thick, black windows of the bulletproof car but most kids are too afraid to even come close. They hide behind burned out cars and inside roofless ruins of houses. Their white little faces are almost black from neglect, and fear renders their eyes age-old and frightening. Klaus fights the urge to look away. Even though the sight sickens him somehow he feels he has no right to. He’s not like Finn, who can drive past these children without even noticing, mind firmly lodged in figures and demands and cold hard numbers. No. This is a world of their creation and Klaus is not cowardly enough to disown it.
He remembers the day perfectly when the first unsettling news came. First in form of facts and figures and numbers on Finn’s laptop screen. Norway. Childbirth rates. Turnings. Deaths. Out of proportion but manageable, Finn said. And Klaus was too preoccupied with gasping for air in Mikael’s shadow to even give a damn. None of them noticed the signs in time, and those who did were casually ignored. Ten years later the first breeding colony was set up in Texas but by then it was too late. All over the world their kind started herding humans into reserves specially built for them, equipped with all the high-tech machinery and all the most expensive medicine to keep them alive as long as possible. In a way it was ironic, Klaus remembers the last ever human US President to have said in his abdication speech, that humans, the tyrants of the Earth and the shameless exploiters of its natural resources had now become such resources rapidly used up. Dying.
Soon a ban on hunting was issued and those who were found guilty of murdering humans faced the direst of consequences. Switzerland was turned into a prison-country for those who could not be trusted with their urges, and the borders were guarded day and night. Blood-rationing was introduced and panicked riots were crushed. Despite the best efforts of control, human trafficking and black-market blood was booming. Even the obvious dangers, after it had been made public that a small but hardy resistance was lacing blood with vervaine and bringing it into circulation, couldn’t stop vampires all over the world from getting human blood at any cost. They were all slowly starving and there was only one way of survival. And those who saw the path and weren’t afraid (or too moral) to take it, became the rules of the world. Mikael’s family had been the first all those centuries ago and they were the firsts when it came to the new rule. They turned cannibal on their own kind. Those who refused had no chance. Once the last human died vampires that refused to slaughter other vampires started dropping like flies.
This scrap-city they are driving through now is the very embodiment of the divide between those vampires who refuse to feed on their own blood and those who are willing to survive at any cost. Their “morality”, or simply stupidity, in Klaus’ mind, has rendered them cattle, nothing more. Slaves to those who are brave enough to change the world. And then there are vampires like Damon and Klaus just doesn’t get it. It’s been a longstanding arrangement, over twenty years now. Damon, for no apparent reason apart from the fact that he never does what people expect him to do, became the self-proclaimed saviour of this little colony in the middle of nowhere. He made a deal with Mikael about supplying vampire blood manipulated in taste and texture so it could pass as human in exchange for whatever they had to trade at the time. It was ridiculous in a way but somehow admirable to Klaus, the way Damon was hell bent to protect his chosen home and its inhabitants even if that meant deceiving them into doing the very thing they despised most and were fighting against. It took guts and Klaus has always admired that.
The car stops at the rundown building that once used to be a magnificent mansion but now is nothing more than a few walls and water-repellent canvas strung out over the most important living areas. Damon still invites them in like it’s a bloody palace and his grin is wide despite the hunger so obvious in his pallid skin. Klaus briefly glances at the somewhat tattered leather jacket Damon is wearing and he suppresses a smile. Both he and Finn decline taking place in the dusty old armchair that once must have been worth a fortune but Damon is unfazed by that, it’s almost ritual by now. He sprawls in one of the armchairs, gobbles whiskey down as if it was the one thing keeping his very bones together, and starts discussing rates and delivery dates with Finn in an almost bored tone as if he was the one with the ace up his sleeves.
Klaus zones out, he’s bored by business, hates that Mikael makes him accompany Finn more and more these days, as if he was hoping Finn’s presence could straighten Klaus out somehow. In every possible sense of the word. Klaus suppresses a sneer and walks to the fireplace that hasn’t seen fire in at least a decade. On the dusty mantelpiece, or what’s left of it, there’s a single photograph of Damon and his brother and Klaus feels a surge of jealousy at their carefree smiles. It’s ridiculous and foolish, Stefan is his, only his. Has been for almost fifteen years now, and yet...
“How is he?” Damon’s voice suddenly shakes Klaus out of his thoughts. He looks around and sees that Finn has already left and Damon is standing close, the grin completely gone from his face. He seems tense and Klaus thinks he understands, he would be too if another vampire owned Rebekkah.
“Better than you, by the looks of it,” Klaus says casually and starts after Finn, but Damon grips his arm tighter than should be possible in the circumstances.
“Just...” he says sharply. “Just make sure he doesn’t get himself killed, ok? Just one more week.”
“What makes you so sure he will want to return?” Klaus sneers but there’s tightness in his chest as he wrenches his arm out of Damon’s grasp and marches out of the ruins of the house. He wishes he could be as certain of Stefan’s decision as he keeps pretending to be.
On the way home, while Finn is making phone calls to Mikael and suppliers and all sorts of important people, Klaus just keeps staring out of the car, replaying that day fifteen years ago. That visit was supposed to be like this one, a fast negotiation, business done. But Damon and Stefan had nothing to trade at the time and too many vampires going mad with hunger. That was the first and only time Klaus was allowed to go alone, the deal he struck with them was later deemed unacceptable and unfavourable by Mikael. Klaus admits, at least to himself, that he was selfish that day, had no consideration for the family business, only his own wants, but he hasn’t regretted it. Every single day of the last fifteen years with Stefan as his personal slave has been worth Mikael’s ever-growing contempt. But in a week the agreed time is up and Stefan will have to make a decision. A decision Klaus doesn’t want to have to compel.
-------------
Well trained by now, Stefan kneels in the characteristic posture of the slaves the moment Klaus enters the room. His head is bowed, his right arm outstretched, wrist exposed. Hunger surges in Klaus at the tantalising sight but another kind of need is weighing on him heavier already. He roughly pulls Stefan to his feet and captures his mouth in a raw, yearning kiss. Stefan leans into the contact with his whole body and more than anything Klaus wishes he could know for certain that that means something, everything.
They fall on the couch in a tangle of limbs. Stefan instinctively wraps his legs around Klaus and gasps at the friction between their cocks. Klaus moans into Stefan’s mouth and bites down on Stefan’s lips, drawing a few drops of precious blood. His fingers almost unconsciously trace the line of the witch-made collar that every slave must wear and can be tracked by and it almost feels impossible that in a week it will be gone. The thought makes Klaus tense like in the grip of a nightmare, a motion Stefan knows well, and he looks up at Klaus questioningly, with a hint of worry. But Klaus just shakes his head and leans in for another kiss.
He’s desperate and needy today but masks it as raw want and passion and hopes Stefan doesn’t know him well enough yet to know the difference. And if later, wrapped around Stefan’s sated, peacefully sleeping body, Klaus whispers “Please, don’t ever leave me” into the ears of his lover, his slave, his friend - well, that means nothing at all as long as no one’s there to hear it.
----------------
Elijah doesn’t ask if he’s alright. He never had to, he just always knew.
They are tasting a new brand of vampire blood to be put on the market by their family in Elijah’s penthouse suite in what used to be L.A. but has long ago been turned into a city-sized blood-factory. Elijah lives here and oversees every part of production from the choosing of the right vampires to be drained completely down to the bottling process. It’s his punishment for having opposed Mikael at the founding of the family business. No one opposes Mikael, not even his favourite son. Elijah bears marks of that lesson even now. His left eye is forever blind, maimed, burned from a witch-made branding-iron that prevents healing and Mikael uses to punish those who disappoint him most. Klaus has escaped it so far, but he knows that’s meant to be the worst humiliation of all, he’s not even worthy of Mikael’s loathing anymore.
“Did you ask about Stefan’s decision?” Elijah asks, turning his good eye on Klaus.
Klaus is quiet for a few moments.
“We don’t speak of that.”
“Maybe it’s time,” Elijah says quietly. “Something is stirring.”
He doesn’t explain what he means by that.
---------------
Klaus wakes in the middle of the night and first doesn’t know why. He shifts closer to Stefan and the familiar scent of his friend soothes him. He’s almost about to drift back to sleep when a scream rips through the night. Rebekkah. Klaus freezes, sits up in bed and turns to wake Stefan but finds that Stefan is already awake, watching him with an unreadable look. Klaus shifts to get out of bed but Stefan grabs him to make him stay.
“I have to see if she’s ok,” Klaus hisses angrily, but Stefan doesn’t let him go.
“I’m sorry, Nick,” he says. “It’s over.”
“What are you talking about?”
Before Stefan could reply the door bursts open and it distracts Klaus long enough for Stefan to pin him against the wall and plunge his hand right into Klaus’ chest, gripping his heart. Klaus freezes and can’t move, from the corner of his eyes he recognizes Damon in the man who is entering the room through the blown up door.
“Sorry to crash the party,” he sneers. “Thought you should know, as we speak your whole family is being hunted down, the slaves freed, etcetera, etcetera, you know the drill.”
Klaus is barely listening, the words don’t even truly register in his brain, he’s too focused on the way Stefan is quite literally holding his heart in the palm of his hand. It somehow seems fitting.
“I see...” he gasps for air, having to force his words through the haze of pain. “So this is your... choice...”
Stefan doesn’t answer.
“You didn’t think he would choose you, did you?” Damon smirks. “Now he’s taking his freedom back.”
Klaus lets out a breathless, bitter chuckle.
“He doesn’t know... does he?” he asks Stefan and the flash of guilt across Stefan’s face is answer enough. Klaus doesn’t have to turn to be able to picture the confused frown on Damon’s face. Stefan shifts as if trying to figure out a way to stop Klaus from betraying his secret to Damon. But Klaus is not generous enough to keep silent.
“If he kills me...” he forces out. “He dies too.”
“What the fuck is he talking about, Stefan?” Damon sounds irritated.
Stefan clenches his teeth, hesitates. “The collar...” he says. “If I kill my Master it kills me.”
There’s a long moment of silence in the room before Damon takes a step forward. “Ok, baby bro, don’t be stupid now. Let me...”
“No,” Stefan interrupts his brother and casts him a brief apologetic look before locking eyes with Klaus again. “No,” he repeats quietly.
Then he leans in and captures Klaus’ lips in a slow, deep, desperate kiss. Klaus can’t help but give into it. His whole world narrows down to the combined, confusing sensations of Stefan’s tongue in his mouth and Stefan’s body pressed tight against him and Stefan’s fingers tracing the line of his jaw and Stefan’s hand around his heart and Stefan just pulling...