[ fic ] collect the souls you've lost ; klaus/rebekah, the vampire diaries
Written for the prompt "Open up your eyes, You keep on crying, baby I'll bleed you dry - Even though she knows the truth now he can't let her go." by river_soul at The Vampire Diaries Free-For-All Comment Ficathon: Part 3. Originally posted here.
collect the souls you've lost » the vampire diaries. klaus/rebekah. pg-13. 1,659 words.
Post-3x09. After Stefan steals the coffins, Klaus's first instinct is to find Rebekah. warnings: incestuous relationship but you can pretty much read it without that? I don't own these characters.
He goes for her straight away, once he realizes. There is rage at first, a pounding, pulsing fury that builds under his skin, and he swears that he will rip Stefan Salvatore from limb to limb if he has taken Rebekah too. He never saw her at the party, he remembers now, a dreadful awareness taking shape, the sense that he's been one-upped again in far too short a time.
His hand curls into a fist around the door handle when he arrives at the boardinghouse, and he promptly rips the door from the frame, both as an outlet and a display of his anger. There is no further time to be indulged in theatrics, though.
"Rebekah?" He calls her name impatiently, as he might on any day, and there is such an air of calmness in the house that he half-expects her to call back to him from upstairs, chide him for taking so long to return. But instead, there is only a silence that confirms his fear.
Fuming, he grabs his phone and calls her again, wondering who will pick up, if Stefan will even bother or if he'll be ignored. And then he hears it ring.
He follows the noise instantly, down the stairs and into the dark basement. Whether it is rage or a newfound, thrumming confidence - he is the most powerful creature in the world and now no one will ever be able to take that away form him - he does not know, but he is able to smash the cell door open, and there she is.
"Bekah," he murmurs when he sees her, and thinks darkly that he has yet another reason to kill Damon Salvatore. He drops to the ground by his sister, grabs the dagger buried in her chest and pulls it free - and it's all too familiar, only this time it's not his fault, this time someone else has dared to do this to his sister, and this time someone will be made to pay.
But that comes later.
He allows himself to exhale now, heavy and relieved, and then he pockets the dagger and scoops her up. She stirs slightly, a twitch, but does not wake up. It's entirely too stuffy down here for his tastes - too enclosed, too prison-like, and he takes off as soon as he's got her securely in his arms.
He still has her. Rebekah. He will need to hunt Stefan down to get the rest of them back but he still has Rebekah, and in light of the past few days, he is entirely too grateful for that.
He's just sweeping past the living room when he hears the footsteps in the front, turns around the corner and comes face to face with Elena Gilbert.
She is frozen, but most importantly she is entirely alone. She is also standing between him and the doorway.
"You should be counting yourself lucky that none of your friends are here right now, that your blood is entirely too precious to be spilled, and that I am currently preoccupied," he warns quickly. "Move out of my way and I will be gone. You will be dealt with later," he promises, but she does not take a step. He rushes forward in a blur, stops right in front of her.
"Move, Elena," he growls, and she finally obliges, stumbles to the right, and then he blows right past her. He has no destination in mind, but by God does he ever want to get the hell out of this town.
And in some grandly symbolic gesture from the universe, one he almost laughs at, Rebekah starts to wake up when they are merely a hundred yards past the sign that says "Welcome to Mystic Falls".
Her eyes are still closed, but her lips are moving, she is saying something, mumbling words that he has to stop to hear.
"Nik..."
His chest tightens.
"Nik," she repeats. Her eyes are still closed; she looks as if she could be merely talking in her sleep instead of returning slowly to life. "You... It's... you're alive," she breathes, and he opens his mouth to assure her that yes, he is, they are both alive, Mikael is dead, they need never be afraid of him again--
"You weren't supposed to be alive," she mumbles. And she doesn't mean-- She's can't mean--
"I was going to help them kill you," she continues murmuring in that strange hushed tone.
And he drops her to the ground.
When Rebekah opens her eyes, Nik is crouched over her, his face calm as it only ever gets when is feeling particularly murderous.
She realizes then that he has his fingers wrapped around her throat.
"Tell me," he says slowly, "that you did not betray me, Rebekah." The way he tightens his grip is surely meant as threatening but she also sees the crazed bright of his eyes, and somehow it all forces a choked, disbelieving laugh out of her throat, that breaks off with a gasp.
"You killed her." Tears well in her own eyes - it is too much, to say those words, to accept them as truth when Nik is here, staring at her. She is accusing him of the unthinkable, of committing the ultimate sin and lying to her for a thousand years, but if she had any doubts they vanish at the pained expression on her brother's face, and the way his fingers loosen at her throat.
She struggles up into a sitting position, shakes him off - he lets her. Rebekah shudders before she can find her voice again, so quiet. "It was never him, it was never Father, it was you," she insists through watery vision, blinking savagely and finally lifting a hand to wipe at her eyes.
Nik is silent.
"You lied to me!" she errupts again, voice trembling. "You lied, all along, you let me think-- it was you," she can't stop talking, can't stop stating all the heart-wrenching facts that she wishes she could believe weren't true.
It takes her a moment to calm down, and then she breaks the silence again. "I wanted you dead," she whispers, her throat thick and her eyes filling up for an encore. "Father--"
"I killed him." There is no remorse in his voice; instead, it is almost a challenge, one that prods her to remember all the years they spent running from that man, all the years Nik promised he would protect her. She feels like a child, lost without her parents, but she also feels so old.
Another shudder takes over; she can't-- she can't stop shivering, and then she is slumping forward, chest heaving, feeling closer to choking now than when her brother's fingers were around her throat-- and now Nik's hand is on her arm to catch her, and he slides his other arm around her. She hates herself, truly hates herself, for fisting her hand in his shirt, crumpling into him and resting her head on his chest, but it's simply-- it's all too much.
She hates him for killing her parents, all her brothers and sisters. But in doing so he's also assured that he is truly the only person that remains to her, and she needs him as much as she hates him now.
"Oh, Bekah," he murmurs into her hair, her big brother holding her tight and comforting her, ready to wipe her tears away.
And she hates herself for this too: she is relieved that he is not dead.
They remain like that for a long time - but what is time to them, he thinks, when they have all of it, and when they will never be afraid again. It is growing dark when Rebekah lifts her head.
Her pretty, silly party make-up is smudged around her reddened eyes, and her mouth is tight.
"Bekah," he murmurs again, as if that alone can express how much he needs her to understand, how much he needs her. He's lost track of how many times he's been repeating it.
But this time she shakes her head. She disentangles herself, pushes him away as she stumbles to her feet. "I do not forgive you," she tells him quietly, once she is standing. "I will never forgive you."
She draws in a breath that seems to take all her strength, and balls her hands into fists at her sides - a thousand-year-old child, he thinks with a wry twist of lips.
"I am going to leave," she tells him, and the expression drains from his face. "I am going to go far away, where I will not see you, because I can't--" her voice breaks, and she shakes her head. "I can't forgive you," she whispers, and it almost sounds like an apology.
He stands up slowly, "Rebekah..." said in warning.
"Let me leave, Nik," she pleads softly. "You owe me at least that much."
He closes the gap between them, quickly moving to stand in front of her, a hand placed gently on her waist.
Rebekah flinches, but does not step back. If anything, she sways closer for the shortest of moments, and then-- "Goodbye, Nik," she insists, her voice heavy.
He brings his hand up from her waist to her cheek, runs his thumb over the bone and then smooths her hair back.
"Goodbye, Bekah," he murmurs.
And he slides the dagger up through her chest.
She gasps, and he catches her with a steadying arm, watches more tears well up in her eyes and cannot bring himself to look away even as her skin cracks and greys.
This, this is all too familiar, because this is the same. Almost a century later and he's achieved the killing of Mikael and it manages to feel as if nothing has changed at all.
She is still the one person he needs, and he will still never let her go.