A/N: So as you can see, this entry in the series got completely and totally out of hand. This is the final part to this particular one-shot (thank God, right, and STFU, bitch, kthx), and I just want to issue a few warnings, and to also tell you all APPRECIATE MY GODDAMNED DEDICATION because I researched both weird sex and the history of dildos for this one-shot. I'd like to say I'm shitting you. I'd like to say a lot of things. (And now you want to know just precisely what you've gotten yourself into with this fic.)

This part is actually more flashback than anything, and this third part will heavily feature the Originals, particularly Kol. Klaus' perspective does pop up in the flashback, but only briefly. I wanted this to be Kol's story because he never really did get one in the show, and because Klaus has had plenty of screen time in this fic, and it won't hurt him to take a step back for just a bit. He doesn't agree, but not everything is about him. There is Klaroline, but not much, since much of this part takes place in 1915. Klaus' attitude as it relates to love in these historical sections does, however, in a way pertain to his present-day relationship with Caroline, because it shows how very far he's come, and how really sort of astonishing it is that he opened himself up in such a way. So even when there's no Klaroline, there's Klaroline. Get what I'm saying? You'll be back to your regularly-schedule Klaroline in the next one-shot, although there will be lots of interaction between the family as well. This is, after all, an alternative take on TO.

Be aware that there are several fairly graphic sexual acts in this part, and also that if you thought this series was gay before, lololololol you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Just a few notes:

Emma Johnson was an actual madame in New Orleans' Storyville, and she did indeed host 'sex circuses' in her brothel. I could not really find any details on the acts performed during these circuses (nothing, anyway, beyond mentions of them featuring both the prostitutes from the brothel as well as animals, so maybe it's a good thing I didn't stumble across anything too specific), but the impression I got was that it was basically just a bunch of sexual acts performed for a large crowd.

Lulu White was also another madame of Storyville.

The 'Channel' Tim talks about at one point refers to New Orleans' Irish Channel, a working-class neighborhood where, surprisingly, many Irish lived. (New Orleans being a port city, a lot of Irish congregated there during the large waves of immigration following the Great Famine.)

Also, harmonica players are sometimes called harp players. I just wanted to mention that really quickly because I use the terms interchangeably in one scene, and I thought that might be confusing. (Until I started reading up on harmonicas, I had no idea they were also known as harps. That conjures up an image of a completely different instrument for me.)

New Orleans, 1915

Death is only a joke.

Most everything is, if you look at it long enough.

For instance:

Once there was a boy called Kol, who wanted to be included. For quite a long time, it was very sad, watching him laugh until the tears in his eyes could be attributed to mirth.

But tilt your head a bit. Let the fog of a decade or two wrap its muffler round this one very small tragedy amongst so many greater others. Do you see how it all recedes? What cause may stand before the might of a tide such as this, what death can not be scrubbed from your heart, how long can a friendship gone to pieces prickle its shards within your chest?

You take a breath.

You try out a laugh.

A century from now, who will remember, darling.

That's funny, isn't it?

A century from now, he will still be a boy who wants to be included.

But nobody remembers that.

It's a very small story, it's bumped up against a lot of others, it has always become snarled with and trod down by the tomes of better tales.

But this is how all stories go.

For instance:

(He's repeating himself, isn't he? Nik says he does that sometimes too.)

You remember the start of the Great War, the hot spray of an Archduke's life, the rattling of guns, the bombers with their bellies open to the clouds, that first red year of death upon death.

But do you recall the boy whose mother begged him to stay, who marched off with her tears and his mingled on his lips, who tasted salt for the entire three months of war which are all the fates sometimes allot to boys who play soldier?

Neither does he.

That's what happened to his story, too. Someone pressed it flat beneath Nik's lingering issues and Bekah's haughty tantrums and Elijah's quiet ruthlessness, because these are the things that go together, and boys who want to be included are by their nature just beyond the circle, pressing their nose to the glass.

But they have a one-liner for every occasion, these boys who are not allowed their dimensions.

And when they descend the stairs to a dinner party whose invitation was surely an afterthought, for an ill-mannered ogre like them, they put a bounce in their step, a smile on their face, a rejoinder on their tongue.

They snap the bowtie of their third eldest brother and they leave behind a spitty kiss on the cheek of their horrified sister, and for the last of this circle that shored itself up with a promise no one saw fit to bestow on this one-dimension boy with his flat paper smile and his feelings that do not exist (just ask anyone), there is a slap to both ass cheeks hard enough to mark the skin beneath.

Nik adjusts his tie.

Bekah wipes her cheek.

Elijah straightens his suit.

He smiles and with his bare fingers samples three of the dishes steaming on the table.

"Kol-"

"Just let him be, Elijah. If you tell him to stop, half an instant of your back to this table and you'll turn round to find dinner on the floor, the ceiling, Nik's hair. And then what will you tell the guests I hear arriving now? Sorry; change of plans. Let's all pop out for a hamburger, shall we?"

Nik smiles at him.

That's something, isn't it?

He has come home five days in a row to an empty house and an emptier bed, but it's something.

Isn't it?

He smiles back.

He sneaks a custard dish of O positive from one of the trays and he tosses it back with an eye bat from Bekah and a sigh from Elijah, who tightens his jaw and steps forward to welcome the first of the guests ushered in by the maid.

"He'll pop a vein before this dinner is through," Nik predicts.

"Do you want to help me poke it?" he asks, lifting an eyebrow.

Nik smiles again, very slyly, his dimples flaring up.

"We are willing to consider a potential alliance, in the interest of restoring peace to the city," Elijah is saying in the foyer. "If you would all please take a seat, I believe four courses will give us plenty of time to come to an arrangement upon which we can all agree."

'Lijah's got bloody place cards for them each.

He goes round the table switching them all up, nudging a silverware setting here, upsetting a glass there, prodding the lids on all the platters just half an inch off course, Nik watching with a snicker, Bekah with an eye roll.

He sits himself at the head of the table and crosses his legs primly, folding his hands on his top knee.

Elijah silently sets everything to rights with a frown and a side eye.

The guests flare out to take their places.

Elijah remains standing, waiting for everyone to get themselves settled.

Nik seats himself three chairs down, Bekah on his right.

The guests rustle themselves in close to the table, bellies to cloth.

"Shall we?" Elijah asks, and he lifts the lid from the nearest platter with a flourish.

He tilts his head and glares down the table at Nik.

"I'm sorry, Elijah, I couldn't resist."

"Is that-"

"The baritone who gave such an abysmal performance last night? Yes," Nik cuts in before Bekah can finish her question. "I thought his vocal cords should at least be good for something. They're in the soup. Very tender. Bit of a lamb-like texture to them."

Elijah flicks the apple Nik has wedged into the head's mouth down the table.

He catches it.

Nik lifts another lid to reveal another head, pries free a second apple, tosses it to him, receives the first apple in turn, and now they begin to juggle the two, quite proficiently, if you ask him (and he looks simply marvelous mid-performance, just ask the brunette in the green with her eyes to his unfairly handsome face), a few of the guests laughing.

Nik adds a third apple.

"In the past three days we have experienced a surge heretofore unseen in the recent violence between the Atreaux coven and some of the local vampires which has begun to spill over from the French Quarter and infest the rest of the city. This, of course, is unacceptable. Niklaus has made you all aware of our family's difficulties with our father, who could potentially be drawn to such a display. It is in the best interests of us all to ensure this doesn't happen."

"That's just lovely, Elijah. You are a born orator, brother."

"A man of unspeakable eloquence," Nik puts in, adding a fourth apple.

"I heard once a siren tried to lure him to his watery death and she left the experience with a pocket square and the lord and savior Gucci in her heart." He tosses his apples to Nik.

"I heard once he talked a prince into war because the opposing side wore white after Labor Day." Nik lobs the apples back.

"I heard once a girl had two idiot brothers who were drowned in vocal cord soup because they couldn't shut their mouths and let a lady enjoy her glass of b positive."

Nik dimples.

He puts one of the apples on his head and juggles the other three without dislodging the fourth, heaves them one at a time across the table to Nik, raises his arms in triumph, apple bobbing on his head. "Do you know what would liven up this party? An orgy. Nik, where's your little boyfriend? I've always wanted to see him naked. And no Marcel- you can't have an orgy without Marcel. His trousers have got an entire-"

"Enough," Elijah says firmly.

"-elephant trunk in them. Once he let me touch it."

"He did not," Nik says, catching one of the apples behind his back. He whips all three over the table.

"Just because he doesn't want you anywhere near it doesn't mean I am under the same restrictions. I'm very pretty, you know." He flicks his tongue.

"You pretended to fall and caught yourself on his penis," Bekah snaps.

He points at Nik. "You didn't think of that. What good have all your fancy books really done you?"

Nik lifts his hands to receive the apples. He lets them make three revolutions and then he begins to toss them once more across the table, and when a look from Elijah bends him snickering over the table, he fumbles the first of Nik's tosses and it thumps solidly off Bekah's forehead, dropping with a rustle into her lap.

She is behind him in a blink.

A fork to either hand pins them to the table, and in another blink he looks up to see Nik similarly afflicted, both his palms flat against the tablecloth, the silverware like flag poles through all the ligaments of his hands.

Elijah delicately dabs his mouth with a napkin. "Shall we move on?"

"I'll have to think on it, Elijah. I'm a bit divided at the moment," Nik says, and he holds up one hand with its wide split down the middle, wiggling his fingers so that the ligaments give a little dance between the ragged lips of this wound.

"The next one is going in your eye, Nik."

In Lafitte's there is the smell of blood, but no Nik.

He thought he'd try anyway.

He knows it's quite pathetic of him. He is 919, he fought a lot of wars, he bedded a lot of women, he drank from a queen, he seduced her king, he took his bare feet and he applied them to the winters of Russia like they were only a mild spring morning, a bit damp, not terribly unbearable, and here he sniffs round old haunts as though he might stir up a bit of his brother's love with the dust.

He recognizes the profile of this little plaything of Nik's, watching the fights from a bar stool in the corner, hat on his head, jacket over the bar, feet up on the bottom rung of the stool.

"I haven't seen you around lately," he says, sliding onto the stool beside the boy. "Don't tell me you had a lover's spat with Nik."

Tim flicks a side look at him.

One corner of his mouth ticks up just a bit, not very humorlessly. "You have to be worth a rat's ass to warrant something like that."

"Behold: he does speak."

The boy ducks his head and runs a hand across the back of his neck.

"Nik's found a new toy, has he?"

You know, darling, he can relate.

You might not know that about him.

"I don't know what Klaus is up to these days. He's got his sister, I suppose."

The circle is complete, mate.

Sorry about that.

Perhaps he can offer you the conciliatory companionship of the plucky sidekick and his armory of jokes which do not taste nearly so funny as they sound.

Tim swivels himself round toward the bar, leans one elbow against the wood. "Been thinking about fightin' him. He's been killin' most of his opponents." He points to the man in the chalk circle, mouth smeared red, hands smeared redder.

"And you think you'll be the one to take him down."

"No. That's why I'm thinking of fightin' him."

All of the silence which can be gathered in a room full of the shouts of gamblers and the screams of victims sieves itself down between them.

Tim gives a little humorless laugh. "That's quite an opener, isn't it?"

"Suicide is a very nice ice breaker."

You will try it over and over again. Sometimes it is boredom. More times it is not.

You see, you get one story, and perhaps it brushes others and perhaps it takes a chunk from history here and there, perhaps it gets its own taste of immortality in the pages of libraries, but still it is only one story, you get tired of it, you want to know something else, to sample from the words which have been written on the gates of the damned or the chariots of cherubs.

There are a finite number of emotions. You will cycle through joy and acceptance and land a million times on rejection and despair and if you have only one short generation to rifle these experiences, they are each of them still new, every time.

But you are only one lonely boy who took a dick up his ass among a society who not long ago burned to ash the sins of sodomists.

You have before you a thousand thousand generations of shame.

"Irish?" he asks, stealing a nip from the glass of whiskey someone abandoned to the ring.

"What?" Tim asks, taking off his hat to run one hand over his head.

"You're Irish. Originally." He takes a long sip. "I can hear it in your voice sometimes."

"Yeah. From Kerry. Took a ship over with me Ma when I was twelve. Tried to pick up an American accent when I came over. We get some of the English gentry in those fancy hotels; some of them don't want a Mick handling their luggage. Or, worse, they think it's all we're good for. Though here it doesn't really matter; sometimes I think half the city's made up of Irish."

He takes another sip. "Surely not all you're good for, darling." He winks.

Tim smiles just a little.

"So. Do you think you'll kill yourself?"

"I guess I wouldn't still be sitting here if I was going to, would I? If you're looking for attention you attempt it, if you want to do it, you do it."

"Nik's not got you all Romeo and Juliet, has he?"

Tim smiles again. "I'm just young. I'm not stupid."

He salutes with his glass. "They're the same thing, darling."

"Not stupid enough to not realize I'm the mouse, then. Or to kill myself over it."

He turns the glass in his hands.

Smarter than him, then, mate.

In 1716 he threw himself off a mountain.

He'll let you draw your own conclusions.

"What happened to your father, then?"

"Huh?"

"The man whose penis spit out a bit of you? You said you came over with your mother. Where was the other half of Tim?"

"Dead. He was a great admirer of Wolf Tone; caught the rebellion bug."

"The last true Irish rebellion was the Fenian Uprising, wasn't it? You're not old enough to have been put in your mother's belly by that time. Nik turned you in 1912? And you look- nineteen? Twenty?"

"Twenty-one. He turned me a few days after my birthday."

"So '91 would have been the year of your birth. The Uprising was in the '60s, wasn't it?"

Tim tips his head just a bit and pivots on his stool. "Were you there for it?"

"No. My last brush with the Irish was a bit of piracy back in the 1500s. Nik always liked Ireland, though. He's got a few books lying around. You're a very disobedient people. I like it."

The boy smiles. His nose wrinkles as he does it, the freckles bunch up on the bridge, and he sees the origination of Nik's little crush.

If Mother submerged them all in the blackest filth of everything cast off from the goodness of man, then at least Nik has got himself the good sense to surround himself with pretty little things.

"Da was killed in '92. Just because we aren't bristling with guns doesn't mean we're not butting heads with the British every few years or so. He got himself executed as a traitor to the crown; that's all Ma would ever really say about him."

He takes another drink, his eyes on the boy. "What happened to your Celtic spirit, darling? Haven't you got a kick in the teeth for Nik?"

Tim drops a hand down on his jacket and bunches the sleeve in his fingers.

He sets the glass down.

It is certainly true that love sometimes puts out our eyes and replaces truth with that rosy glass of the poets, who filter through rainbows this emotion that is more often an anvil than the bloody angel wings the prose of novelists awards to the densest of fools, the lover, but you have breathed the muck of Nik for three years, mate.

Nik lowers himself for no dalliance. He put his prick in you because there's a very nice pink to your cheeks and lashes to tinge Rebekah green with her envy, but you've a brain beneath your youth, else the papers'd have found you facedown in a gutter come your first path crossed with the second handsomest of the original monsters.

Didn't you see it coming?

But then.

He's 919.

He has ended precisely 304 searches for his brother just like this, in a drink, and though he does not wear his heart so plainly as this boy, he is just as surprised, every single time.

You just expect to receive it back, don't you?

Tim rubs his chin, working his jaw against his fingers. "You come for the fight?"

He swallows another sip. "I came for Nik, actually."

The boy looks at him. "Two idiots walk into a bar," he says, and his smile is too self-deprecating to wrinkle his nose this time, but it's still a very nice smile.

"He speaks and he jokes. Do you know, I bet without Nik around to muzzle you, you're fairly interesting? Come on; give us a quick rundown. I already know your age. Height? Favorite color? Penis size?"

Tim sits back and laughs at the last, looking down at his hands. "6'3; red; big enough to choke your brother, mate."

He slaps the counter with his hand and points at the boy. "He's saucy, too. I like that in a man."

They let the roar of the crowd overtake them, and for a moment Tim swivels his head round to watch the two opponents circling one another in the ring, and then he reaches down into the pocket of his trousers, and he unearths a watch he opens with a noisy click.

"Yours, or have you picked up Nik's little habit of pinching pocket watches? Has he ever shown you his collection?"

Tim snaps it closed. "He hasn't shown me any part of him that isn't something I'm supposed to put in my mouth."

He slides his drink down the counter.

Tim lifts an eyebrow.

He flicks his tongue obscenely. "It's got me all over it. What other reason do you need? Have a sip, darling."

"I'm off, actually. It's midnight; I promised a few friends we'd have a drink together." He slides off the stool and tosses his jacket over his arm, adjusting his cap.

He slings the jacket over his shoulder, and lingers awkwardly for just a moment, pressing his lips together, sliding his hands into his pockets.

He slips one of them free and holds it out in front of him.

Do you know-

He can't really remember the last time he's clasped hands with a man so innocently, merely to shake down through his wrist a hearty farewell.

The last of the chasteness goes from your touch round about the second century or so.

But he meets this boy palm to palm with hardly a squeeze to dent his fingers, and he lets his smile blossom naturally, without that extra bit of cheek that drops the trousers of men and women alike, and it's actually quite nice.

Imagine that.

On the deaf ears of another empty house falls his dramatic reading of Eljah's copy of De Profundis, only funny thing is that ten pages in this bit of fluff that was supposed to offer up a bit of florid juiciness for his amusement gets its hooks in him, and pulls him down to be quiet in a chair he doesn't leave for a very long time.

From the seat of his shame Oscar Wilde pens all the yearning he wasted on his gay young lover while from outside the bars civilization puts its shoulder to his pedestal and tips it over with a good riddance to that, and what isn't deliciously nasty about that?

But here is what the book tells him:

But you, like myself, have had a terrible tragedy in your life, though one of an entirely opposite character of mine. Do you want to learn what it was? It was this. In you Hate was always stronger than Love. Your hatred of your father was of such stature that it entirely outstripped, o'erthrew, and overshadowed your love of me. You did not realize that there is no room for both passions in the soul. They cannot live together in that fair carven house.

And he thinks, of course, as he always does, of Nik.

And so when he puts the book down and he trots up the stairs to set to flame three paintings of Nik's (a ship, an ugly woman, some flowery landscape- ask him not what he destroys, darling, he cares only that each of them are Nik's children, and he loves them equally as he never loved his siblings), he stops when the frames have got only a touch of black round their corners, and he puts them out.

He sits down on the window ledge.

Is love a sword, that it might be taken up by a valiant knight-errant and put through the stomach of Hate?

He tried that, you know.

Hate casts a very long shadow, and love is not so very bright a sun as you might expect.

But he puts the fires out.

He puts the fires out, and when his brother comes to the door at last, he has a smile on his face that is not mocking, and he asks Nik how his day went, and if he's up for a round of cards or a night out on the town, but Nik's got Bekah of course, and she's waiting, don't do anything he wouldn't do, little brother, and don't pat him on the bloody head, Nik, he is not your dog.

Don't do anything you wouldn't, Nik, is that right?

He aims to please, doesn't he, little Kol Mikaelson, your trained monkey?

There is not much Nik wouldn't do.

Chief among them is to react rationally to a poke to the feelings he is not supposed to have.

He has heard (through rumors of course, because to what else is he supposed to put his ear- an echoing bloody house?) that Elijah and Nik have got themselves a little team put together for the witches of New Orleans, and it just so happens (isn't this a happy coincidence) that he has to his name five very sharp stakes.

What's that?

Five team members?

Darling, this is surely Fate at work with her nimble hands!

Lest you think he has taken this story and he has shooed from its pages the protagonists to whom he is supposed to cling in sidekick obscurity, be assured that your main darlings are quite present.

In fact one of them is kicking the shit out of him at this very moment.

Nik has got that natural superiority of all elder siblings, and to back up his faster fists he has the passion of the quite foamy rage he has worked himself into, but he's a biter.

He sinks his teeth into Nik's hand and when his big brother rears back with a cry, he elbows Nik across the jaw and pushes him down the stairs.

"I left you a present, Nik. You didn't like it?" he asks, wiping his face as he descends.

Nik has him in a headlock before he is three steps down.

"You don't touch my things, Kol. You do not break my toys, you will not disturb any more of mine and Elijah's plans. Do you want Father breathing down our necks?" Nik asks right in his ear, crushing him back against his chest, his forearm cutting into his throat.

He'd settle just for you, Nik.

Or Bekah.

Or Elijah.

He's not even picky at this point, brother.

You know about that, don't you, Nik? Mother left you behind. You lashed out. You took whatever you could get.

You don't understand why his throat keeps working against your arm, why he posed those five vampires round your studio like it was some great joke, why he followed Bekah and Elijah for six blocks and he extracted himself from their hair only when Bekah gave him a swat like he was some sort of fly, still shit-speckled-

Nik-

Does he have to say it?

"Are you listening?" Nik snaps in his ear.

"I'm not sure- does your voice sound like a very high-pitched whining?"

Nik boxes his ear and lets him go. "Behave yourself, Kol."

Love thy brother, Nik.

Is that so bloody hard?

Is he really such a gnat?

Nik?

Don't answer that.

Bekah is home but Nik and Elijah are not when the front door swings open and Tim lets himself into the foyer.

He flashes from the parlor to lean himself against the wall nearest the boy, putting both hands in his trouser pockets. "Nik isn't here."

Tim leaves the door open behind him, mirroring his pose, both his hands going to his own pockets, his shoulders hunching forward awkwardly. "I was, uh…I was looking for you, actually. I was wondering if you'd like to come down to the Channel, maybe have a drink?"

He holds out his hands to either side. "I haven't eaten yet. I could go for a blonde."

"I actually was thinking like a, uh, a Guinness."

"Well that's not quite as exciting."

"That's all right. I just- I thought I would ask." Tim shifts his hands in his pockets, presses his lips, looks down at his feet.

"I could pick something up on the way?"

Don't look so surprised, darling.

Loneliness makes the best of bedfellows.

Well.

Perhaps not the best. Certainly the most passionate, though.

Do you want to know a secret?

There is something that never goes out of a man even long after he has molted skin for scales.

If you hold out your hand, and you whisper him softly to it, and you pet him as he takes his first tentative nibble, he will hound your heels for all your days.

See how long he has followed the brother who used to sing him down to sleep, who died on the point of his father's sword, who never did rise again.

Perhaps you did it only to battle the isolation that makes prison cells of days that you have not yet begun to understand are without limits; perhaps this is about the self, as most things are; perhaps you could mount upon his face any old not-nearly-so-handsome mug and be satisfied with half the wit and intellect, but thanks, mate.

For thinking of him.

You would be the first.

"What shall we do with a drunken sailor, what shall we do with a drunken sailor, what shall we do with a drunken sailor, early in the morning? Put him in the long boat until he's sober, put him in the boat until he's sober, put him in the boat until he's sober; weigh heigh and up she rises, weigh heigh and up she rises, weigh heigh and up she rises, early in the morning!"

He claps out the next part of the beat from his perch on the bar, his foot joining in, and now a man in the corner starts in with his fiddle, a second with his harmonica, and Tim hops up to join him on the bar, mug in his hands, the head of his Guinness in a moustache round his lips.

"Put him in the back of a paddy wagon, put him in the back of a paddy wagon, put him in the back of a paddy wagon; weigh heigh and up she rises, weigh heigh and up she rises, weigh heigh and up she rises, early in the morning!"

The man on his fiddle drunkenly fumbles one of his slurs.

"Ah!" Tim yells. "Drink, ya' fucker!"

Someone holds a mug to his lips.

He drinks as his bow darts on.

"Put him in bed with the captain's daughter!" Kol screams, and a cheer goes up.

"Put him in the bed with the captain's daughter, put him in the bed with the captain's daughter, put him in the bed with the captain's daughter; weigh heigh and up she rises, weigh heigh and up she rises, weigh heigh and up she rises early in the morning!"

Tim sloshes beer down himself, laughing till his cheeks go red as his lips, and now they link arms and skip a little drunken circle down the bar, beer flying everywhere, the harp player taking his mouth from the air holes to belt out a laugh that nearly tips him off his stool, the fiddler fumbling again, and with another hoot of "Drink!" he takes a second sip, misses a note, drinks again, his technique gone wholly to hell now, the entire bar roaring, all of them off-beat, Tim stumbling nearly off the edge of the bar, mug of Guinness still in his hand, Kol holding him up by the elbow, the fiddler trying to rescue his tune, the harp player surrendered to his whiskey-

"What's the next fuckin' line?" someone yells, and this too sends the bar into hysterics and Tim down onto his ass.

He takes the mug from Tim and smashes it on the floor.

There is another cheer.

He holds his arms over his head.

"Rocky Road To Dublin!" someone shrieks at the fiddler, who salutes with his bow and blows the rosin from his instrument.

He nudges Tim as a few shaky notes drift out from the strings. "Five dollars and a kiss says none of you can beat my friend here in a round of arm wrestling."

"You can keep your kiss, lad, but five goddamned dollars on those skinny little sticks?"

"I'll take 'em both!" another man yells. "Another pint and you'll be just as pretty as me wife!"

"Another pint and I'll be prettier than them both, you drunken fuck!" the patron beside him roars, puckering his lips beneath his ratty beard.

"Come on! Step right up! Who shall take his humiliation first?"

"I think Tim's a fair bet; he's about to take a nosedive off that bar," the harp player yells from his stool.

He catches the boy's elbow again. "He's all right, darling. Do we have a first challenger?"

A large man sets down his mug and shoves back his chair. "I hate to make babies cry, but that's half my wage for the week. Ought to bring your rich friends round more often, Tim." He pulls a seat up to the bar.

Tim hops down to set his elbow on the bar, angling his hip into the edge and extending his hand, his long fingers still damp with his drink.

The man wraps his palm round Tim's.

"Ready?"

The fiddler plays a quick little reel.

Tim flexes his fingers.

His opponent looks over his shoulder with a smile.

Someone salutes with their drink.

"Go."

It's over in merely a second, of course.

He leans in close to the man, giving him the full force of this smile he has learned from Nik. "You were saying?"

He purses his lips playfully.

The crowd gives a loud jeer. "Your pinky finger's bigger round than him, Pat!"

"This is what happens when a man's got no wife!" someone laughs. "Come on, Tim, give him your off arm! Give the man a chance!"

Tim drops his left hand and holds out his right.

They both nod to Kol.

"All right, gentlemen- have at it."

He hears the frantic struggle of Tim's challenger, the strain of his heart against throat, chest, wrists, the grinding of his teeth, the little groan in the back of his throat, the sliding of finger against finger, elbow on wood, every pore of him gushing up his embarrassment to make its way in shiny rivulets down his forehead-

Tim slams his hand down onto the bar.

The bar cheers.

Kol holds up the man's arm and shakes it cheerfully. "For being such a good sport about your humiliating defeat at the hands of such a pretty young thing," he says, and yanks the man in for a wet kiss.

There is another cheer as the man jerks backward, spluttering as he goes, free arm coming up to wipe from his lips the damp imprint of another man's mouth.

"How was it?" the harp player wants to know.

"Sweeter than your wife's!" he hollers back.

Tim slumps against the bar, letting his head fall to the arm he braces against its edge, his entire body shaking, cap in disarray, hair tufting out from beneath the lining.

"Are you all right, mate?" he asks, laughing.

"He's pissed. Let him sleep it off in the ditch outside. He's followed up more than a few revelries in it, haven't you, Tim?"

"It's closing time anyway, you assholes," the bartender calls out, wiping up the beer round Tim and slinging the cloth back over his shoulder. "Actually, it was closing time half an hour ago. Let's have an arm or two for the boy, and all get the hell on out."

He leans across the bar toward the man as the others begin to collect their jackets and their hats, taking final sips, storing away their instruments, getting in their last jabs. "Actually, I think you're going to want to let us stay, darling. Tim and I will close the bar. We're perfectly trustworthy."

"Sure. That sounds good," the bartender agrees amicably, blinking his glazed eyes.

He pulls Tim off the bar and sits him on a nearby stool as the building begins to empty itself into the street, the greasy fingers of this wet southern night slithering in through the door to gets its slime down his neck, the boy's giggles slowing into random spurts here and there as the crowd lingers outside for only a moment and then starts to disperse, carrying their farewells off with their footsteps, a few of the more inebriated ones ricocheting off all the clattery things which drunks are led to with unerring feet.

"Good night, boys," the bartender says, tipping his hat.

He buttons his vest and steps outside, closing the door behind him.

"Jesus Christ I'm drunk," Tim laughs, pulling his head up off his arm.

"You'll shake it off quickly," he assures the boy, and hops the bar to wander some of the more expensive racks of alcohol, hands behind his back. "They're not half terrible, for a bunch of humans. Very entertaining."

"They're a good group. I've come here since before I was turned. Few of them knew my Ma; sort of helped me get my legs underneath me again."

"While Nik was kicking them right back out."

Tim fists his hand on the bar and sets his chin in it, his long lashes fluttering. "I knew what I was getting into, didn't I? I mean, I've tried to blame him a lot. He's charismatic, he's manipulative- he makes you…he makes you want to be worthy of his attention, you know?"

He knows, darling.

"But, I mean…he never forced me. That's what it all comes down to," he says quietly, knocking off his cap with one hand and running his fingers back over his hair, all the way to the little tail that kicks up a bit in the back, curling at the end.

"You always put your lips to the most poisonous stream. The clean one's not very interesting, is it?"

Tim looks up from beneath his brows, shifting his chin a bit on his fist.

He smiles, a very tiny thing, but it sends a little shiver down his spine. "I guess you would know. Nine hundred and…?"

"Nineteen." He leans forward. "And I've put my lips to a lot of things, over the years."

Tim lets his head drop back to the bar with a groan. "If there's one fookin' thing to say for all this shit, at least I won't have a hangover in the morning," he says, his brogue slipping through.

"Well, that's worth a murder or two, wouldn't you say, darling? And none of it even goes to your hips!"

He hops up onto the bar to sit with his back to Tim, crossing his feet at the ankle and swinging them lazily, pulling his untucked shirt up out of the little spot of beer the bartender missed. "You know, Nik- once he's done with something, he' s done. There's not going to be a Jane Austen ending."

"There's no Jane Austen ending for anyone who lives forever," Tim says quietly.

He leans back to rest his shoulder briefly against the boy's forehead, and flicks his chin. "You see- I told Marcel you weren't nearly as dumb as letting Nik use you for one of his puppets would suggest."

Tim is silent for several long moments. "I'm not queer."

"I'm 919. I'm not burdened by society's prejudice. After a couple of human lifetimes, sexuality becomes as fluid as morals. You give an animal long enough, it always evolves. Do you think Nik's the only one to put his paddle in the other side of the river?"

"I just -I'm not- I like women. I do; I don't even understand how I could have…you know?"

"Nik sort of has that effect on people."

Tim blinks.

He laughs. "You can wind your jaw back up into your face, darling. We're not that twisted of a family. I mean Nik's very persuasive." He looks down at his still-swinging feet. "And there's enough of him left that you want to pull a bit more of it to the surface, every time you glimpse it. That's the real quicksand, mate."

Tim lets another long silence descend between them. "Would you…uh…would you maybe- I'm here a lot. I haven't- I haven't really got anywhere else to go, anyway. Do you think you might want to come back, another night?"

Did you know, Nik, you give the boy just a bit of kindness, hand him a little interest, sit and really listen to him only every so often, that's all you need, and he just opens right up.

There's another boy like that.

You have not always been conscious of that.

But at least you tried when he brought forth his concerns.

Once upon a time.

But. That was many, many lifetimes ago, Nik, and there's no use crying over spilt intestines, now is there?

"I might need a lot of persuading," he tells the boy silkily, but his smile is genuine.

He leaves Nik and Elijah to their little plots, spends his nights ripping up the Channel with Tim, occasionally sober, more often not, cleans out the pockets of these humans who return with larger friends to challenge the slender pretty boy who will never grow into his shoulders, takes on three at a time at Lafitte's, talks the boy into skinny dipping in the Mississippi before the scandalized gasps of the church parishioners gathered to see off their preacher in a flock of ashes, drains every meal he takes, breaks out half the shop windows in the French Quarter, sets flame to the remainder, pops into the house just often enough to see that Nik is still out, that he has not left a note.

"Well, darling, what shall we do today? I know." He points at Tim. "There's a big to-do tonight at the Theatre de l'Opera. Do you want to see some very expensive panties make their way up the golden cracks of this town?"

Tim laughs. "Fuckin'- what have you got?"

"I'm going to hang myself from the stage. I'll drop down right in the middle of the actors, mid-scene, cause quite a panic of course, and beforehand we'll have cleared out one of the boxes off to the side, right? And we'll put you there, out of sight, of course, and as they're all flailing about, I want you to give a great, big, booming laugh. Make it as evil as you can get it."

"Like this?" He throws his head back and lets off a cackle.

"From the back of the throat, mate. Wa ha ha ha HA HA HA. You're Satan. You've just sacrificed a goat. You ate a virgin."

He tries again.

"Yes! Feel it. Right in your chest." He taps the boy's pecs. "You bleed sin. You eat cock for breakfast. Your mother swaddled you in the wrong skin. You are everything wrong with the entire world. You're a Negro who wants my penis. You're a lady who flashed her bare ankle. Also one of your jacket sleeves is just a bit shorter than the other."

"Is that one of the official sins?" Tim asks, smiling at him.

He tweaks his nose. "Just ask my brother. Elijah believes very firmly in capital punishment for the mistreatment of any innocent garment."

It's possible it's only an invention of his own mind.

Those who have been thrown scraps always let loose with an imagination that conjures up a deeper meaning.

But when he leaves his hand for just a moment against Tim's face, the boy leans himself into it, just a little, very subtly, his lashes brushing not even long enough to tickle.

He pulls back.

Nik would have pushed forward.

But the boy's been dinged up enough for now, wouldn't you say?

There is not much softness left to hearts that have endured nine lifetimes. Lot of granite put through to the organ, after that much time.

Still. He has not completely forgotten what it is to relate to similar bruises.

"Come on," he says, and jerks his head toward the door of the hotel room where Tim has taken up residence. "Let's have a dress rehearsal, shall we? Church ought still to be in session."

"You're not going to hang yourself in a church."

He slings his arm round Tim's shoulders. "I'm going to hang myself in a church, and you're going to sing from the rafters the little song I'm going to compose on our way over. I think best with the clock ticking."

"You know I'm a good Irish Catholic?"

"Well, we'll do it in a Christian church. I wouldn't want to dent up your devotion. What is it the Church has to say again about lying with a man as a woman?" He leans in close and flicks his tongue in and out of Tim's ear.

Tim jerks away with a startled cry, wiping spit from the side of his face. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you little asshole!"

"You have a very dirty mouth. I think I should wash it out."

"With what- your tongue?"

"Now you're just hinting. It's all right. You don't have to be ashamed of it. You've already seen me naked- I understand that can only be resisted for so long, and you've done fantastically."

Tim pushes his head away with two fingers.

He falls back to slap the boy across the ass.

Tim pops him across the stomach with his cap, and they fall out into the hall laughing, earning a side look from a stately gentleman with his pretty lady on his arm, and so he gives the gentleman a wink and he takes Tim by the hand to place an open-mouthed kiss against his wrist.

The woman comes to an abrupt halt.

"There's room for one more," he says, aiming this at the man.

"Good Lord," the woman snaps, and they both hurry off.

"You're going to get me burned at the stake."

"Of course not. You're nearly as pretty as I am- I wouldn't let that be marred. Bone structure such as ours is museum-quality. You preserve that. If only we could have children, darling," he laments.

"But who would raise them?"

"We'd do it together. You would change the diapers, handle all the feedings, wake up in the middle of the night with them, and teach them that it is never ok to listen to their Aunt Bekah, while I held down the most important job of all: maintaining and improving upon my already otherworldly handsomeness. No, scratch that second part. You cannot improve Michelangelo's David."

"Didn't he have a small dick?"

"I'm sure it was very cold."

Tim notices suddenly that they are still holding hands, and disentangles their fingers.

"Have you got your laugh down? Let loose with it first. Then, when I come back to life, I'll begin to dance round on my rope. That's when you start singing. I want a standing ovation, so put everything you've got into it."

The First Presbyterian Church lets out with a howl like the lamentations of those first to the shores of Satan.

Tim swings down from one of the rafters, shaking his head.

There is the wailing of sirens far off in the distance.

The weeping of a few very distraught grandmothers (his best audience- at least one heart attack among them, a few more probable, very nice, you just don't get appreciation like that, you know), the confused sobs of their grandchildren, the hushed murmuring of the more composed-

"Tim," he hisses through his compressed windpipe. "In my left pocket."

"What? We've got to go, Kol."

"I nicked Elijah's camera. Go on and get it."

"What- Jesus."

The sirens swell.

"Come on- this was a good one. For posterity."

"Jesus." Tim wraps one arm round his shins to steady his pendulum corpse and gropes round with his free hand for the bulge of the Kodak in his pocket, one corner of his lip caught up in concentration, brow furrowed, his feet straining up onto their tiptoes.

"Oh, yes." He moans loudly. "Right there. Just like that. Yes. You have the fingers of Aphrodite. Yessss. Just like that, my little Irish cupcake."

"Would you shut the fuck up- they're going to try and snap me up for rutting corpses now."

"Oh, that would be funny; quick, put your trousers round your ankles."

Tim wrests the camera free and pops the window out.

The sirens are a shriek now, the tires of their bearers squealing in the streets, the weeping dimming as so often it does when help is near at hand.

He smiles and puts up his thumb.

The shutter clicks deafeningly.

Tim stuffs the camera into his vest.

He reaches up to snap the rope one-handed.

He lands on his feet.

They burst through the doors of the church and shoulder their way through the crowd, the rope still around his neck, Tim's cap pulled low over his eyes, and as the first of the responders draws to a halt outside the church, he leaps onto the hood of the car, drapes both his arms over the little windshield, tips himself upside down to peer into the interior of the car. "Four cylinder?" he asks.

"That's the dead man!" a woman shrieks, and begins to scream.

He rights himself. "Tim! Your hat!"

The boy tosses it to him.

He catches it nimbly, sets it on his head, sweeps it off once more as he takes a bow. "Did you know a man died in there?" he asks the officers. "And that man was trying to penetrate him post-mortem?" He points at Tim. "Anyway. Horrible what this city is coming to, isn't it? Carry on, darlings."

He bounds off the hood.

The screaming woman faints.

"I didn't penetrate anyone post-mortem. Just so that's out there," Tim makes sure to tell the crowd before they both flash off into one of the side streets.

"Kol," Bekah says to him one night as he is lying in his bed, waiting for it to not be so bloody cold, and he looks up from beneath the arm he has got draped over his forehead.

"Thank you...for not telling Nik where I was. In London." She touches a hand nervously to her hair, the way she always does when she's about to bare the bit of herself behind the teeth and the claws. "You should try and be home more often. He's been asking about you."

No he hasn't.

Nik's got you now, Bekah.

But he does appreciate the little bone you have snuck him from your five-course feast.

Marcel stops him in the French Quarter one morning with a hand to his shoulder and a smile to split his face. "Where you been, Kol? Haven't seen you in, what- probably a good three weeks? A month?"

"About that."

"What the hell have you been up to?"

"The usual, of course. Breaking hearts. Inspiring jealousy. Collecting the knickers of all my conquests."

"You're not mixed up in this witch business, are you? Klaus has got himself real twisted up over something. Thought maybe you were playing for the other team."

He shoves his hands in his pockets and rocks back on his heels. "I haven't been anywhere near the witches, actually. Nik and Elijah have a monopoly on that. I'm doing what I do best: being a general pestilence to all who touch me. Do you think they'll ever invent a cure for me?" he asks, pasting over this question with his usual smile.

Marcel stands studying him for a moment, wiping the heat of this lazy morning from his forehead. "You all right?"

Of course.

Here, darling.

Have a joke.

It's what he's good for, after all.

"If you can make it to the roof from here, I'll let you feel anything you like."

Tim eyes the span of empty gray sky between the Hotel Monteleone and the roof of the bar they have stretched themselves out across, a jar of pickled asparagus between them.

He laces his hands on top of his hat and licks his lips.

"Anything."

"You'd let me do that anyway." He squints. "You really think I can't make that?"

"Ten seconds of sloppy groping says you can't."

"So I make the jump, and I feel you up. I don't, and you feel me up. Either way, you win."

"You really think I'm the only winner in that scenario? Did I ever tell you there are ballads featuring certain skill sets of mine?"

"Yeah, the whole lot of bullshit that drops from your mouth every time it opens. That's a handy skill." Tim gets up into a crouch, bounces a little on his heels, cracks his neck. He rubs a hand across his chin. "How much does it hurt, if I miss?"

"Ever broken every bone in your body before?"

"Oh, yeah, lots of times. Me neighbors used to use me as the silotar in their hurling matches."

"You're getting very lippy. Why don't you put your mouth to better uses?"

"I thought sarcasm was next to godliness?"

"No, that's suits. Or the subjugation of peons. Depends upon which of my brothers you ask."

Tim dangles his hands between his knees and bows his head to laugh. "And what does your sister say?"

"Shut up, your voice smells of peasant. Also, you're standing in that shaft of light that highlights her features just exactly right when she tilts her head precisely three centimeters to the left; move, or she'll dismember you and bury each of the pieces on a different continent."

"She's a bit tiny, to be tossing around those sorts of promises, isn't she?"

"Yes, but she fights very dirty. Ask me about the time she threw Nik off the Great Wall of China after he suggested that perhaps the dress she was wearing wasn't really suited to her coloring. That, and he told some awful pun afterward. Bekah is a tough crowd. You going to make the jump or not?"

"I'm still deciding."

"Do you need motivation?" he asks, and cocks an eyebrow suggestively.

"What if I can make it to the ground without breaking anything? What about that?"

"That's nothing. We're fifteen feet off the ground, darling."

"Shit. Fine. I'm doing it."

"You're not jumping."

"I'm working myself up to it."

"What's the nastiest thought you've ever had?"

"What?"

"I'm distracting you. You'll work yourself out of it if you sit here and spend the entire time thinking about opening your head on the ledge of the Monteleone. So what's the nastiest thought you've ever had? Sexually, I mean."

"I'm not telling you that."

"It was about me, wasn't it?"

Tim rubs between his eyebrows.

"Was it a sheep?"

"No! Jesus."

"This is a non-judgmental rooftop."

"You tell me your nastiest thought, then, if you can just pop it out like that."

"To be tied up by a man in a penguin suit and spanked until I bleed while we are silently watched by four clowns who will wash my left foot but not my right and then go on to partially eat the man in the penguin suit and have an orgy without -and here's the tricky part- removing any portion of their costumes. They can speak then, but only to call one another 'Daddy'."

"Did you just pull that out of your ass?"

"Entirely. Did you like it?"

"You know it was eerily close to my own nasty thought?"

"You be Clown #1, I'll be Clown #2?"

"No. I distinctly remember being Clown #4 in my fantasies."

He lounges back on his hands with a smile as Tim stands up, shaking the kinks from his legs. "Oh, look- you're jumping," he says, and kicks him over the side of the roof.

The boy falls noisily, cursing the entire way.

"Fucker."

His hat comes sailing up from somewhere beyond the lip of the roof, skittering across the brick.

"All right, come on up- I promise I'll kiss it better."

Tim never does make the jump, but there's a very nice storm that night, lots of lightning, the white tongues of the tempest sizzling along the clouds, and so they stay on the roof to watch, the jar of asparagus forgotten at the edge to drown in the sporadic tears of this ill-tempered midnight, Tim's hat pulled low enough to keep the rain out of his eyes, he with his jacket in a pillow beneath his head.

"It's beautiful," Tim says, crossing his legs at the ankle.

A lot of things are.

Because you forget a truth for a while does not make it less true.

When you have your hand buried in the guts of the world and you have spent all your time unraveling them into the mud, you very often forget to look up.

He doesn't want to be all poetical about this. He is no artist; language is only a means to an end. You'll find no flowers in his mouth or honey on his tongue.

But lift your head once in a while, all right, darling?

Tim shifts next to him, rolls over onto his side, props his head up on his hand. "Have you ever wanted to go somewhere you haven't yet gotten around to?"

He narrows his eyes against the rain.

Back.

That's it.

"I've pretty much been everywhere."

"I've been to Ireland, I've been here. I guess I'm trying to figure out where to go next."

"Well, it's not like you don't have time."

"Yeah." Tim takes off his hat, flicks water from the brim. "Would you want to come?"

He keeps his eyes on the sky, but he lets enough of a smile soften his face for the boy to see. "You'd need some sort of guide, wouldn't you, a new thing like you? And you wouldn't want Nik- he's all wrong for that sort of thing. He'll take you to the museums, to all the great views of the world- all very nice, but who will have a penis joke ready at just precisely the right moment, when you think to yourself how much of the world you have left to explore, how much of it will perhaps have faded before you can ever even get to it, because what endures is us and us alone?"

"That's what it comes down to, doesn't it? Everything around you dies? But not you."

"But not me. Not you, either."

"And how long does it take to get used to that?"

Well.

Forever.

But coincidentally enough, that's exactly how long you have left to you.

They are sharing a cigar in the Academy of the Sacred Heart Chapel, Tim's feet up on the pew in front of them, his right leg looped lazily over Tim's left, when the doors open with a bang.

He tucks his leg back onto the bench they are slouched against and swings his other over Tim, straddling him as a very thunderous-looking priest appears in the doorway.

Tim takes the cigar from his lips and puts it to his own.

"Sorry. We're just very big fans of what you do here. We need a bit of help, as you can see." He bends down to run his tongue up the side of Tim's neck.

Tim shudders and lets out a breath, his head falling back against the pew.

"Did you want to join? You've got to have something to pour out into your confessional booth, don't you?" He takes another long drag from the cigar Tim passes him, and runs one of his hands high up his thigh.

He feels Tim's hips subtly press forward.

The doors slams.

"I'm going to hell," Tim says.

"You're not going anywhere; that's the beauty of immortality. Which means you could take care of that right now, right here, if you wanted to." He flicks his thumb briefly over Tim's erection, and then stands up.

Tim flushes and drops his boots from the pew.

He throws the cigar still-smoldering onto the floor.

"It'll put itself out," he tells Tim when the boy moves his foot to smudge it beneath his toe.

"Or not."

It's only a building, and one day like all other things that are not him, it will no longer stand.

Why not today?

They close out once more that first bar with the drunken harmonica player and the even drunker fiddler, everyone dissolved off into the night, a gale tearing at the shutters, two tumblers of whiskey between them, he leaning against the bartender's side of the counter, Tim the patron's.

Midnight has come through the windows to touch her tendrils to the boy's flushed cheeks and long lashes, all the lights shut off for the night, just darkness between them.

"All right, I've got one," Tim says. "A man goes to the doctor and he says to him-"

He leans forward across the bar and touches his lips very lightly to Tim's.

It's a blinding thing, takes up no time at all, but he doesn't pull back very far, just enough to see what Tim wants to do, those long lashes lifting hesitantly from his cheek, tongue coming out to taste his lips, the silence taking on flesh now, building itself into quite a bulk between them.

They stare at one another for a moment.

Tim clears his throat.

He drops his head to scratch at the back of his neck.

"Well that was a misinterpretation of some signals, wasn't it? You ought to be careful what you're putting out there for innocents like myself to get themselves all keyed up over," he says, brushing his hands down his trousers and then slipping them into his pockets.

It's a sharper sting than he'd have ever imagined, pulling back from this boy with no greater reciprocation than a couple blinks of his pretty blue eyes.

"Kol-"

"A man goes to his doctor and he says to him?"

"Uh, he says- I forgot, actually."

"My kisses do tend to have that effect." He smiles. "I'm sure you've got another. If not, I have nine hundred years worth of dirty jokes. In fact, I've probably already heard all the ones you have to tell. But go on and see if you can put a new spin on them."

Tim shifts himself from stool to counter, swiveling round so that his legs sweep over the bar and dangle down the other side. "Right. So, what about…um…yeah! Four drunks walk into a church, and the first of them goes up to the preacher and tells him there's a dog outside. Preacher doesn't say anything. So the second drunk yells, "There's a dog outside!" and pokes him in the shoulder. The preacher doesn't even move." He opens his knees, runs his hands down his thighs. "So the third drunk says, 'I'm an awkward, shithead idiot.'" The boy ducks his head and gives that bashful crinkle of his nose that puts his heart to his ribcage, and now the silence stretches between them once more, even heavier this time, and then Tim hops down off the bar and leans down to close the four inch gap between them.

He's a very tentative kisser, soft, so he lets the boy take the lead, setting both hands lightly on Tim's hips, tipping his head back to accommodate this difference in height, opening his mouth but leaving his tongue inside.

Tim pulls back, presses their foreheads together, just stands there breathing against his lips for a moment.

He kisses the corner of Tim's mouth, his bottom lip, buries one hand in the hair at the nape of the boy's neck.

"Kol-" he says quietly, and then he surges in for another kiss, still open-mouthed, still no tongue, pushing a noisy exhale through his nose, his hips pressing forward, his cock twitching against the front of his trousers.

He takes Tim's hat off his head and tosses it somewhere behind them, grabbing the boy's neck in both hands.

They stumble back against the bar, Tim's tongue in his mouth now, both of them grinding against one other, Tim's lips separating from his to muffle a curse into his neck, his shoulders heaving, his pulse throbbing, both of them digging in with their fingers hard enough to hurt now, hips bruising where they crash together.

"Bite me," he gasps.

"What?" Tim asks hazily.

He tips his head to the side. "Bite me. As hard as you can."

"What- I'm not-"

He runs his tongue over Tim's bottom lip, pulls him into a kiss so hard their teeth clack together. "Do it. Bite me. Or do you want me to go first?" he asks, and with reptile speed, darts his fangs out to taste the boy's shoulder.

Tim's knees buckle.

He laps at the wound for just a second, brings his bloody mouth back to Tim's, kisses him until neither of them can hardly breathe, and then it becomes a frenzy, Tim ripping into the side of his neck, he scratching at his back, both of them pistoning their hips, the bar creaking at his back, Tim's jagged gasps in his ear, their kisses smearing blood, saliva, all of it one blurry mess until Tim finally pulls back, putting a good foot and a half between them.

He wipes his mouth.

Tim takes a moment to get his breath back.

He reaches up to smear a spot of red gently off the boy's chin.

Tim drops his chin to tentatively kiss Kol's palm, leaving his lips there, his lashes flickering against the tips of his fingers, his breath slowing as his heart winds slowly back to that elevated beat of the monster. "Do you want to go back to my hotel?"

He tips his head, smiles very faintly as he takes his thumb across Tim's cheekbone, just below his eye. "Why don't you think on it for a bit?"

"What?"

"No one understands the desire to get me out of my trousers better than me, darling. But Nik tore you up a bit."

You're young. You've got time. You don't need to cat round with an old man whose bones never stretched beyond those green saplings of the teenaged years. Not if you don't want to.

You had that choice with Nik, too, you know. It's just that you never can see that far past his brother's smile, now can you?

He claps his hands together. "Now. Prepare yourself for the astonishing wit of the prettiest man, woman, creature you will ever meet- I am unfairly multifaceted, aren't I? And did you notice that little thing I did with my tongue? You won't come across that again."

"And on the seventh day, God created Kol," Tim says, ducking his head a little bashfully and putting his hands in his pockets, his smile very innocent for something so red.

"And he was perfect. But you've seen me naked. You already know that."

"It's gettin' a bit deep in here. I don't think my boots reach high enough."

"Don't sass your elders. They've eaten kings. Show some respect."

Tim picks up his hat and bows elaborately, one arm out to the side.

"That's what I like to see." He shoves the boy playfully into the rack of bottles behind him, catching his hat as it jolts up out of his hand and placing it on his own head. "I worked up an appetite while you were taking advantage of me. You want to get something to eat?"

Tim chokes a little. "Right. I pinned a 919-year-old vampire against the bar and had my vicious, newborn way with him while he pleaded with me to stop."

"That sounds nice. We can do that instead." He smiles. "But, no, really, darling, I'm famished. I need something fast. Let's pop over to the Quarter and pick up a street-walker or two, what do you say? We'll even let one of them go, if she can get us both off simultaneously, with only her mouth."

They are walking through Storyville one night when Tim darts out his hand so quickly that he understands the boy has thought about this for a very long time, wrestled it round, stamped it flat, puffed it back up once more, let it grow until like so many things which are pinned down it expands beyond his control.

He slips his fingers through Kol's own.

He smiles across at the boy as a man edges round them with just a glance to these linked hands, because what lurks in the gutters of this district is far more sticky with mire than two gentlemen who close the space between them just a bit too much.

He lifts Tim's hand and kisses his wrist. "Let's hit up Emma Johnson's. I can hear it from here; she's obviously got one of her sex circuses in full swing."

"Sex circus?"

Kol jerks them both to a dead halt. "You're not about to tell me you've lived in New Orleans thirteen years and you've never been to Emma Johnson's."

"I'd never even been into Storyville until I fell in with your brother."

"I am ashamed. Nik has utterly failed you. Come on," he says, and tugs the boy down the street after him, giving a little skip up out of the road and onto the sidewalk, unbuttoning his dinner jacket as he goes, giving his bowtie a tug to twist Elijah's knickers, letting it swing loose round his throat as they walk, hands still joined.

"Behold: Emma Johnson's French Studio, the seat of all sin."

It's a grand mansion, painted up very nicely, ladies in the windows inviting sin from beyond the froth of their delicate curtains, jazz poking itself through all the openings in this house with its wide doors and half-cracked windows, the ballroom into which they let themselves echoing with the cannon shots of men's catcalls and lady's jeers.

He drops Tim's hand.

"All right, everyone! I'm very sorry to inform you that this has become a private show. No grumbling now. Just step right out." He slaps a few of the cuter ones across the ass as they make their way past, then whips round to face the performers frozen in the sudden uncertainty of an act interrupted. "Don't pay any mind to us. Just a couple of paying customers. Very big fans of your work, by the way."

The whores pick up where they left off, two of them busy at the breasts of a fellow performer, another between her legs, the scent of sex and sweat dilating Tim's eyes, his breath picking up as he awkwardly adjusts his hat and shoves his hands into his pockets and tries to look anywhere but this quartet.

"How do you like the blonde?" he asks, leaning in to direct the question right into Tim's ear.

"She's very nice," Tim replies, looking at the ceiling.

He laughs.

A dandy gentleman in a top hat and tails seats himself in an armchair pushed out into the center of the floor by two naked whores and unbuttons his trousers. The first whore leans over to place her hands on the arm rests, her mouth descending, her hair fanning out round them in a curtain between actor and audience, the man throwing back his head as she takes his cock to the hilt.

The second ties the ribbon at her waist.

She trails her lips sensuously up the back of the first.

"What's she wearing?" Tim asks.

He ducks his head to smother his smile in his palm. "It's called a dildo."

"Is she going to-"

The woman thrusts forward with a buck of her hips, and the first whore bows up from the man's cock with a little cry, arches her back, pushes back with her own hips as her lover settles into a violent rhythm, their flesh clapping together, the man spreading his knees and taking his cock into his fist as he watches, his head still back against the chair, the hat spilling off his head to bare his bald patch to the sun of the chandelier overhead.

"Wait until you see the pony."

"What?"

"Well, it's not a real one." He leans his chin against Tim's shoulder, and nods his head toward the far side of the ballroom.

A man outfitted in rein and bit scampers across the floor on his hands and knees, pulling a little cart upon which sit two whores in proper gown and hat, one slouched on the driver's bench, her slippered feet propped up on the rest in front of her, skirts up to her hips, the other kneeling between her legs, face buried.

The sitting lady tips her hat and cracks her whip.

He loops his arms round Tim's waist, hesitates for a moment, presses a kiss to his shoulder.

He trails his nose up the side of Tim's neck, stops just behind his ear, kisses this sensitive spot softly, drags his lips round to the lobe, bites it with his human teeth.

Tim twists his head to put himself cheek to cheek with him, tilts himself just a little further, leans into a languid kiss of lazy tongues, and wandering hands, both of them beginning to move against one another now, Tim's trousers straining beneath the fingers he slides down over the boy's hip and skims down the fly, his cock twitching, Tim's fangs putting in an appearance to prick his bottom lip-

The woman with her quartet of attendants cries out her orgasm.

Tim murmurs something into their kiss.

"What?" he rasps, blinking himself out of his languor as he pulls away.

"I'm a little worried. They've already brought out a man in a pony costume- are we going to see your penguin and four clowns?" Tim's nose crinkles.

"Don't you want to see how they have an orgy without even taking off their trousers?"

Tim laughs.

They bump noses in a brief kiss, Tim's cock still in his hand.

He runs his thumb over the head and then pulls away.

The crowd gives a roar to rattle the very rafters.

Tim spins the table leg in his hand.

He pops the head off the man who lunges for him, twirls it in a playful circle, wings it across the room.

"Ten on two now, darlings! You can tie one of my hands behind my back this time."

"Nobody?" Tim calls out. He slings the table leg over his shoulder.

"All right, all right. One hand behind my back, his cock in my mouth, and you can break my good arm."

Someone tries to rush him from the back.

He stabs backward beneath his arm with the table leg Tim tosses to him, and he tips his head back and shuts his eyes to truly savor the sudden perfume of death, table leg quivering against his ribs,

Lafitte's sends up another roar.

He hangs his head out the Model T they have snatched from the Quarter, barking rabidly at the passersby who scatter with startled shrieks before them, Tim grinding the gears, whip lashing the wheel, jerking them up onto the sidewalk, back down into the street, the wet summer wind howling in their hair, that familiar scream of the sirens coalescing behind them, the scent of rubber, adrenaline, terror all round him-

They crash carelessly into the side of the Theatre de l'Opera and come out with their hands up.

"Get on your knees," one of the officers snaps.

"Ooh, I like where this is going."

He head butts the officer, snatches his gun, shoots one through the throat, another through the heart, rips into the shoulder of a third, takes the neck of a fourth in his hand and slams the man down onto his back against the hood of his car.

A blink wipes the human features from his face, and the man begins to scream.

He runs his tongue sensually up the line of the frightened tear that creeps its way from the officer's eye to his cheek, and shoots him in the head.

Tim rises from his crouch with his lips stained.

He stuffs the revolver into his pocket and holds out his hands. "Is this a gun in my pocket, or am I just happy to see you?"

They give to the walls of the St. Stephen's confessional quite a few new sins to breathe into the ears of priests, both their shirts off, Tim straddling him, lips bloody with the violence of their kisses, his fingers digging into the boy's shoulders until the skin gives beneath them.

"Fuck," Tim gasps into his mouth, grinding against him, kissing his sweaty forehead, the dimple in his chin, his torn lips.

He holds the boy's cheeks in his hands and tongues him until neither of them can breathe, thrusting brutally up with his hips, panting death rattles against Tim's mouth, sucking on his bottom lip, denting it with his fangs, tasting what wells up, sliding one of his hands down between them to feel Tim's cock through his trousers, stroking the shaft as he rubs himself against the head-

"Shit; shit-Kol-" he hisses, and suddenly Tim stiffens against him, his mouth opening, a little shudder rippling up his spine to touch itself to his shoulders.

He drops his head back against the wall of the booth. "Did you just come?" He runs his hand up from Tim's cock through the line of fair hair that disappears down his trousers, all the way to the nipple he circles gently with his thumb.

"Fuck," Tim mumbles.

He laughs and leans forward to kiss the point of the boy's chin, just below his bottom lip. "Did you try to make this into a contest? I think I've got just a bit of a leg up on you so far as sexual stamina."

"I was just sort of hoping to not go in me goddamned trousers."

"You could have warned me. I do swallow, you know." He wiggles his eyebrows.

Tim laughs and brings a hand to his face.

He moves it to kiss him lingeringly, their lips moving softly this time, Tim breaking away to skim his mouth over Kol's jaw, his neck, his collarbones.

He licks both his nipples, pulls away for just a moment, puts his warm lips back to his sternum, kisses his way one damp press of the lips at a time all the way to the waistband of his trousers.

He undoes the first button.

Kol leans his head back against the wall once more, lifts his hand to find Tim's hair, shifts his hips just enough for Tim to pull his trousers down far enough to free his cock.

He lets out a little breath as first Tim's thumb and then the tip of his tongue find the head of his cock, his eyes fluttering.

Tim licks the underside of it, circles his tongue round the rim, opens his mouth against the head.

He feels his toes curl, his heartbeat trip, his blood surge.

Tim puts him all the way to the back of his throat, and begins to fuck him in earnest now, his tongue sliding wetly, his lips working roughly, just a suggestion of teeth, both his hands sliding up to pin Kol's hips to the bench as he tries to press up with them, both of them gasping, his cock throbbing, little white specks behind his lids, his hands clutching roughly for the hair at the nape of Tim's neck, the bench clattering against the wall, Tim pulling free to lick him everywhere, to press an open-mouthed kiss to the head, to sheathe him all the way once more.

He hears the church doors open.

Tim keeps going.

He tightens the hand in the hair at the nape of Tim's neck until he feels the strands break loose in his fingers.

"Oh my God!" the woman who has come to tell tale of her sins screams, bringing both hands to her mouth.

"Stay right there, darling," he says as Tim licks the head of his cock once more and wraps the base of it in his fingers, stroking him roughly, following his hand with his mouth, his tongue flicking, his fangs very carefully treading that delicious line between pleasure and pain.

He comes with the woman watching them blankly.

They share her between them, and leave her empty in the booth.

"Russia."

"1812; I was one of the soldiers repelling Napoleon's attack on Moscow. The French have quite a nice flavor, by the way."

Tim runs a finger up his spine. "Japan?"

"1328. Bekah and I had a row over who got to be the emperor. We were so busy fighting over it we never did get round to killing the little twit. We dashed off to Scotland soon after for some war Nik thought would be interesting. It wasn't very. But I got five kills to every two of Nik's, and that pissed him off. So I liked that part."

Tim laughs against his shoulder.

He rolls over to face him, sneaks a kiss, runs his hand down to hook his thumb in the waistband of Tim's trousers. "Do you know what was really fun? The French Revolution. Blood all over the streets. You could bathe in it." He lifts his head to suck on Tim's ear. "You didn't even have to compel anyone- you could eat whoever you liked, whenever you liked, there was that much death. Nobody cared. That's what we need here- a good revolution. Not this little pony show with the witches. Heads in the street."

Tim presses him down onto the bed, a hand on either side of his head, and kisses him.

He grabs a handful of his ass and pulls Tim's cock against his own.

They kiss almost lazily for a while, the sheets rustling beneath them, hips rolling slowly, the ceiling fan rattling out its final fever throes.

It coughs out its last revolution just as he rolls Tim over and straddles him, popping open the first of his trouser buttons.

"That fucker's gone out three times in two weeks."

"Electrical fans are overrated, I guess." He kisses Tim's navel.

"What do you think they'll be like a hundred years from now?"

"They'll probably fly round your head to any angle you command them to." He pops open the second button. "So will the cars."

Tim's legs flash up suddenly round his waist into some wrestler's hold he counters easily, slamming them both back against the headboard where he pins Tim's hands, kissing him brutally.

They part breathlessly.

He rips Tim's trousers getting them down, trails a line of warm wet kisses up his thigh, presses them belly to belly as Tim reaches down to fumble with his own fly.

He kicks his trousers the rest of the way down as Tim wrenches them off his hips and over his ass.

It's a very rough lead-up, a frenzy of biting, tearing, clawing -yes, darling, there we are, get after it- both of them in red smears across the others' lips, his mouth raw, his cock nearly painfully hard, but when he flips them both onto their sides and he slips inside Tim, one hand on the boy's hip to guide his thrusts, he does it almost tentatively, swapping kisses over Tim's shoulder, pumping languidly inside him, leaving his lips pressed against Tim's shoulder when the boy breaks their kiss to catch his breath.

Tim grabs the hand on his hip and slides it down to his cock.

He kisses Tim's neck.

He smoothes his hand down the length of his cock, matching the pace of his hips, swirling his thumb over the damp head, lightening his touch on the down stroke, tightening on the up, pushing up with his own cock to hit just precisely that right angle until with a little choked cry Tim spurts across his hand, reaching back to pull Kol in for an open-mouthed kiss as he comes.

He thrusts harder this time.

The boy pushes a shaky exhale through his nose, shoves himself roughly backward, bites Kol's bottom lip, tongues him violently, shoves himself back once more, and now with another thrust they both come, he muffling it in Tim's shoulder, Tim pressing his face into the pillow beneath him, their hips hammering with bruising force until they have seen this wave through to the end.

He slips out of Tim and rolls him over so that they are facing one another, chests pressed together, lips just barely grazing.

"And that's why you always go Kol, mate."

"Oh, Jesus Christ."

They laugh their way through another breathless kiss.

Nik is waiting up for him when he slouches through the front door still rumpled with sex.

They stare at one another for a moment, Nik's left foot twitching where he holds it stretched out before him, his stomach giving a little hop into his throat.

"You've been out a lot lately," Nik says, tilting his head to one side.

"Just following your lead, brother. Home is where the murder is. How's your systematic expunging of the local covens going, by the way? I've heard rumors here and there, but you just can't trust someone who's got your arm to the elbow in their guts. They'll say anything to get in your trousers."

Nik doesn't blink.

It's a very eerie thing, this unwavering appraisal. Eyes like a bloody chisel, his big brother.

"Elijah and I have things under control. I'd wager it's a very long time before any witch anywhere gets it into their head to throw off the mantle of oppression under which they perceive themselves to be laboring. Word does tend to travel."

"It's not oppression if you're the one writing the history books." He smiles.

"They did start it." Nik holds his hands out to either side. "They could have chosen to stand idly by while monsters wreak havoc among the innocent. Humanity, after all, has no problem whatsoever with doing precisely that. But let's not talk about business, little brother." Nik sits forward with the smile that reminds him of Father. "I hear you're enjoying my hand-me-downs. Now, not that I can't sympathize with the distraction of Tim's obvious talents, but I have concerns."

"You mean the way I see him as a person around a hole? Yes, that probably is quite alarming for you. Who even does that, am I right, Nik?"

Nik's mouth thins. He stands.

He is neither Bekah nor Elijah, and what fear curdles in his belly will not make its way free to his face or his voice.

"Oh, come on, Nik- don't look at me like that. One line on your forehead is cute; three are just passé." He yanks on the bowtie that he only halfhearted knotted as he left Tim's, unraveling it round his neck. "Didn't Mother ever tell you that at the stroke of midnight a face like that sticks forever?"

"This is not a love story, Kol," Nik tells him menacingly. "Everybody leaves. Have Rebekah's exploits taught you nothing? There is us. That's all."

"Always and forever, yadda, yadda, Nik- you know, I don't really care?" He whips the unknotted tie from his neck. "Besides, who says I'm looking to skip off into the sunset with him? Can't a man have his blasphemous fling and fuck it too?"

"Because you're just as pathetic as the rest of them. You think you can toss out a joke and it covers up every little poke to the heart you take when someone doesn't love you enough. What have I said about the failings of love, little brother, and how we, of all people, ought to be above that sort of fallibility? It's ridiculous. You'll outlast everything, and you look for permanence in something as unstable as bloody feelings."

He smiles very amicably and points at Nik. "You're starting to piss me off, darling. I wouldn't do that. Remember, I'm not Bekah. You won't get out of it with a few vases broken over your head and a pair of sore testicles."

"Don't threaten me," Nik snaps.

"I'll do whatever I like. I'll outlast everything, remember? Including the knot you've got in your knickers."

Nik looks away, licks his lips, scrubs one hand over his chin, flicks his eyes back to him with just enough of his old brother in his face that this look sinks in to the gut and there lodges its blade, sharp as anything which has ever pierced him.

Hate it when that happens, don't you?

"Kol-"

Nik wets his lips again.

He's quite awkward sometimes, Nik is. He used to see this dallying round the bush when on the other side lurked a pretty thing with long lashes and sly smile, but you were always supposed to just pop wide your mouth and let loose with anything to tickle your throat when the moon cast only two long shadows of brother beside brother.

It's just him, Nik.

He won't make a production out of your apology, brother.

He misses you. He loves you.

But above all, though you will not believe it, for who would pardon a man whose own mother could not absolve the sins of her sons, he forgives you.

Give him a reason to not be ashamed of that, Nik. Mercy is not supposed to be an indignity.

Look:

He'll even go first.

"Nice to see you home; I missed you; care to have a drink and break things?"

All right, Nik.

Your turn.

Your turn, brother.

Nik?

What he's trying to say-

What he means-

Do not leave him, little brother.

That's all.

But what lives in the hearts of fascists may not make it to their lips, because how much of power is illusory, to be kept in the darkness where all chinks are filled till they no longer show empty round the center?

Kol's smile dims a bit. "Let me try again, Nik. I don't hear Bekah anywhere, so would you like a drink and a snack with the only member of your family who watched you rip Mother's heart out and decided not to spend the rest of eternity hating you? Do you think you'd get that kind of loyalty from Bekah or Elijah? Hmm?"

There is a thundering in his ears that entirely drowns the next words out of his brother's mouth. "What did you say to me?" he asks numbly.

"I said that I saw you kill Mother and I got over it, and not only that, but I've kept it a secret for nine hundred years. Even when you didn't deserve it. Maybe you should think about what that means, and whether you're really applying your loyalty in the right directions. Bekah left you for a century because you killed some minor French nobleman who made her toes curl." Kol taps the end of his nose playfully, smiling eerily. "I watched you murder my own mother, and here I still am., darling. Why don't you think about that?"

He works his dry tongue clumsily against his lips.

He darts his eyes to the left and he calculates the distance from brother to dagger, his nerves making their way in little damp trickles down his palms.

"You can't tell her."

"Why?" Kol cocks his head. "Because she's just forgiven you? Because your precious little bond might not recover from this blow? Because who cares if I forgive you, what about Bekah? Do you know what I find pathetic, Nik? Not love; that's inevitable. I'll give you a hint- actually, let's make it a story. You like those, don't you? Once upon a time, there was a boy named Nik-"

"Shut up."

"-who pinned everyone underneath him because that was the only way he could get any of them to stay, and what's even funnier than that -not in the 'ha ha' sort of way, of course, it's really quite sad- is how afraid he was to-"

"I said shut. Up."

"Well, I don't need to go on anyway, do I, Nik? We know how it ends. Nik Mikaelson sat on his wall; Nik Mikaelson had a great fall. And everyone ground him down into the shit of the street, because that's what he is, isn't that right? That's what his father used to tell him?"

"Shut your mouth!"

"And instead of taking the hand his brother held down to him, he spit on it. Because what good is a childhood of oppression if you can't turn it round on the world? You've got to have the bigger boot, don't you? And to apply it indiscriminately, even to those who have loved you through everything?"

Now would be the time to put out his hands, to take his brother by the shoulders, to put them face to face and to make his apologies, because what is not spoken bleeds through every hurt line in his brother's face and tremulous crack in his voice, and it was not always him opening up all these little wounds, you know.

Once he was the one who sealed them up.

But that was before anger was his only recourse, because to roll over and to flash that vulnerable strip of belly, kindness, is never a lesson nine hundred years drums into a man.

So his little brother takes his fist to the jaw with barely a flinch, and he calmly spits out a tooth at their feet, and then they are brawling on the floor.

He breaks Kol's arm.

Kol shatters his kneecap.

Another exchange and he flashes back out of the fray to set his shoulder to rights, to shrug the vertebrae of his neck back into place, and then he grabs Kol by the scruff of the neck, and he hurls him face first into the wall.

Kol breaks his nose on the way down, opens a gash on his temple, chips a tooth, cracks his jaw, goes to his knees coughing blood.

For a very long while, he lets these moist hacks be the only sounds in the room.

"Why don't you run along to your new friend? I was done with him anyway. I don't mind you living off my scraps." He leans in as he straightens his tie, smiling right next to his brother's ear. "You've been doing that for quite a while now anyway, haven't you? Affection's a terrible thing to have to mete out of obligation, wouldn't you agree? It's very tiring."

Kol spits another mouthful of blood and will not look up.

He lifts an arm to wipe his eyes.

You can live for a very long time, and never recover from sights like these.

The last tears this most flippant of brothers shed was not long after the lengthening of their teeth. He held a woman with Mother's face and he stroked her hair very softly, lipped at her throat for a bit, licked up the remains, and then he put a hand to his eyes, and he began to bawl like a child.

You will never guess who stepped up and put their arms round his trembling shoulders.

It was 1045; he didn't know any better.

"Keep your chin up, mate," he says playfully around his thick, thick tongue, and then he jogs up the stairs with his heart in his throat.

He talks three of Nik's cohorts into a building on Decatur street and sets it on fire.

Their screams are very nice.

He wonders what Nik's would sound like?

Tim bends him over one of the pews in St. Stephen's and fucks him until the wood snaps beneath him.

He pulls up his trousers and he gives his hair a rakish ruffle and he takes his bat to Nik's favorite art gallery.

On Tuesday he personally stakes one-third of the French Quarter's vampire population.

On Wednesday he breaks Nik's latest masterpiece over his knee.

Thursday is just generally murdery, vampires, witches, who has time to be specific, darling -it's the chaos that's the thing- Friday brings about a hanging, Saturday another burning, and Sunday- well, even monsters must have their day of rest, isn't that right, God?

Oh, he forgets.

You can't hear him.

That's all right; no one else does either.

Here, then.

Have a few more souls to cluster round your gates with their beggar's fingers to the bars.

He closes each bar he frequents.

Sometimes those die-hard alcoholics still staggering their steps into two AM mist make it, sometimes they do not.

What are you going to do, darling?

Such is life. Sometimes it's a fever, sometimes starvation, sometimes the guns of a war your government fights at the expense of all its disposables.

Sometimes it's him.

But just imagine the last thing you see, as you make your way into that dim black space all man fears until he finds himself in its warm sleepy grip- that chin, the cheekbones- those eyes!

You're welcome, darling.

Tim sleeps like a child.

Set a bomb off over the head of this one and see if he has a lash flicker to spare, he thinks with what feels to him like a fond smile, but what does he know, about loving and being loved, and he carefully strokes the hair just beginning to shag down over the boy's ear.

He settles down onto his side with his chest to Tim's back and one arm draped over his hip.

It's not a love story, is it, Nik?

He knows that.

He just was hoping not to have it shoved in his face.

There is an early sunrise through the window when he jolts awake with his stomach in knots.

Tim is already in front of the looking glass with lather and a razor to his chin, his bottom lip sucked in as he scrapes carefully round the underside of it, one hand gripping the small desk upon which the glass is propped as he leans in toward it.

"I see you've got those three hairs shaking in their boots."

"Hey." Tim points the razor at him. "I'm going to grow out a moustache and wax the ends of it like that man you ate last night."

"I should have made that last a lot longer. He deserved it. You just don't wear something like that where other people can see it." He kicks the sheet off him and kisses Tim's shoulder on his way into the bathroom.

He spends a long time over the sink, reddening his cheeks with handfuls of cold water, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes, slicking down little uncooperative strands of hair here and there while out in the main room Tim finishes his morning routine.

"You all right?" Tim asks, shuffling into the room as he sponges the lather from his face with the towel round his bare shoulders, tilting his head back to get the froth underneath his jaw line. "You're looking a little-"

"Shitty?"

Tim hops up to sit on the edge of the sink. "Nah. Just tired." He reaches out to brush a strand of hair from Kol's eyes.

He parts Tim's knees and crowds himself between them, smiling up at him. "I know a way you could wake me up."

Tim ducks his head to smile down at the hands he coils just a bit nervously in his lap -quite the adorable little thing, isn't he- and then he leans forward to put them forehead to forehead.

They swap an open-mouthed kiss.

He drops his hand between Tim's legs and begins to stroke him with his thumb.

Tim kisses down the side of his neck, presses his fangs in just a fraction, licks what wells free, shifts himself just far enough forward that they are cock to cock.

"I was going to ask -I mean, I was thinking of- I might go back to Ireland. I miss it." He makes a little noise in the back of his throat as Kol rolls their hips leisurely together. "Not right now." He tips his head back. Kol kisses up his throat, onto his chin, along his jaw line and to the lobe of his ear. He sinks his teeth in.

Tim digs his nails into his hips. "I know you have your family."

They share one more lingering kiss, Tim's tongue sliding sensually along his own, and then they part.

"Are you asking me to go with you?" He cocks his head.

"If you want to. I mean, I'm not expecting it or anything, I just, I mean- you said you haven't been there since the 1500s. It's not- it's not like here, or anything, uh," he looks down with a little embarrassed laugh, "I don't think there are half the whorehouses, or theatres or anything like that, but it's- it's nice. Green. We have a lot of rebellions?"

Kol laughs.

He sometimes forgets what a freeing thing that can be. When you spend the greater part of your 919 years laughing at others it is easy to overlook that mirth is not always a thing to be had at the expense of your fellow man.

You can be happy.

It's a reason all on its own.

Isn't that something?

"Are there more of you, where you came from?" he asks mischievously, running his hands up Tim's thighs.

"There better not be."

"What? Do you not share very well? Don't tell me we haven't even gotten you into a threesome before you want to be all exclusive. It's all right; perfectly understandable, darling. Once you've had me, there's no turning back."

"You're so fuckin'-"

He cuts Tim off with a long kiss, flicking his tongue skillfully. "Intimidatingly flawless?"

"That's exactly what I was going to say, ya' narcissistic little fucker."

"There's nothing little about me."

Tim jerks him in closer by the hips. "All right; I won't argue with that one."

"I'll go back with you."

"You will?"

"Yes; in a couple of weeks. Just let me break a few more of Nik's things first." He bends his head to suck Tim's nipple between his lips, unbuttoning his trousers. "Keep an eye out today, would you? I've got 900 years of gut instincts poking me this morning."

Tim laughs. "I could make a comment about what's poking you, but it's too easy."

He kisses Tim's neck softly. "I'm serious, actually. Nik might decide to pop your head off and leave it on my bed. I've pissed him off a lot this last week, and he thinks I like you."

"Do you?"

Well, now, that's the thing, isn't it.

A lot of lines get blurred in 900 years, particularly that pesky little distinction between a bit of instinctive warmth and that far more dangerous cliff edge that is love.

He can tell you that he is clumsily unpracticed in both the giving and the receiving of it; that last he felt a stirring like this he killed quite ruthlessly; that when you smile it goes straight to his chest rather than to his groin.

What does that mean, exactly?

It's funny, isn't it.

You never can determine just exactly what it is that signifies this emotion that sends men to their deaths for it, no matter how many years you've pressed flat beneath your boot.

"I don't want to see your head on my bedcovers. I know that."

Tim smiles gently up at him. "I'll make sure it stays where it is."

"All right." He tweaks Tim's nose. "At least have a thought to your mouth, darling; it's very useful."

He passes three days with this same snarl of premonition in his belly, but if Nik's little pending plots are the seeds of his unease, he is still patting the dirt round them and giving them a good water, because he kills in peace (two humans, seven more of Nik's little minions; just imagine, darling, the look on his face), and when he and Tim walk the length of Storyville one early morning, there is hardly a soul to be had.

They drink themselves into a round of sloppy sex in the parlor of one of Storyville's brothels, and then with Tim draped giggling round his neck, hat askew, they stagger their way into the street where two startled patrons watch them clumsily grope one another on Lulu White's stoop.

He walks Tim back to his hotel and drops him off with a kiss of bumped noses and teeth clicked together, both of them holding the other up, laughing into one another's mouths, their kisses a bit spitty but no less enthusiastic, Tim opening his mouth to get his tongue in on the embrace.

There is a sudden wind against his back. "Kol, get back to the house. Now."

"Elijah?"

Tim blinks hazily.

"What are you doing here?"

"I need you to get back to the house. Don't argue with me. If Niklaus and Rebekah are home, clear them out immediately. Leave the city, whether I'm back or not."

He drops his hands from Tim's waist. "What's going on, Elijah?"

"Father is here," Elijah says, his voice cracking just a little. "I thought I might find you here, so I stopped in on my way back to the house. I know you often stay over, and I didn't- I didn't want him to catch up with you before I did. Get back to the manor as fast as you can. Be very careful. Niklaus will never forgive himself if something happens to you."

"All right. You check the Quarter- pop in at Lafitte's; he might be watching a fight. Bekah's probably with him, wherever he is. I'll check the house. Do you know where Mikael is now?"

"He came in on a ship. I spotted him…down at the wharves." Elijah leans his hand shakily against the side of the hotel for just a moment, breathing through his nose.

"Lijah. Are you all right?" he asks, taking his brother by the elbow and steadying him with his own suddenly-sober arms. "It'll be fine; Nik's too wily to get caught up in Father's net. He'll keep Bekah safe."

Elijah touches his cheek, very softly, just for a moment, and something in his brother's eyes nosedives his stomach even further between his boots, and he would have told you, just a moment ago, it couldn't possibly sink anymore, he's slopped every bit of himself out onto the pavement beneath him because what he said about Nik is certainly true, no eel is so slippery as his paranoid brother with his backup plan for his backup plan, but if Nik did not dissolve into his own tears during that final confrontation, his jabs bruised a bone or two on their way in, and it's not going to be the last thing he ever says to the brother who checked for monsters beneath his bed.

Is it?

You can tell him that at least, right, Elijah? He's spent a very long time trying not to mind that once his brother was not a monster, and he loved him, and perhaps Fate has taken this certainty from him, but it will not send one or the both of them to their deaths with all this ugliness hanging between them.

Elijah?

Haven't you even a bloody word for him -he just needs- he needs just one little goddamn reassurance to lock his knees, to square his shoulders, to send him forth with a whistle on his lips though there is a storm in his belly. He really didn't mean -Elijah, he wasn't trying to push anyone away, he just- Nik just knew precisely where to aim, brother, but he didn't mean- Father is shit, not Nik, Elijah, Nik knows that, Nik knows he never lapped up a single crumb of Father's bullshit- why are you bloody looking at him like that-

"I'm very sorry, Kol."

"What? For what? Did you lie to me? Is Nik- oh my God- Jesus Christ, Elijah-"

"Kol," Tim says softly, touching his shoulder. "Let's get you to the house, all right? You can meet up with him there."

"No no no no- Elijah, why are you sorry? Did you lie to me? Is Nik dead? Did you say that just to get me moving? Are they both- what are you fucking sorry for, Elijah?" he screams, and through this sudden fog in a cotton round his head he realizes Tim has an arm round his waist, that his knees have let go beneath him, that the air he does not need has squeezed itself off from his throat and left him gasping like a bloody fish.

"Shh, it's all right," Tim says, shifting the arm round his waist to heft him back onto his feet. "You're all right, Kol. We'll go and get him, ok? Ok?"

"No; Elijah- don't tell me he's dead, Elijah. I didn't mean what I said to him. He knows that, doesn't he? I was just pissed, Elijah-"

Elijah cups both his cheeks in his hands and pulls his forehead into his chest, to hold him there for a moment as he tremulously gathers the air back into his lungs. "So was he, Kol. And he was fine, last I saw him, earlier this morning. Go find him, make your amends. Leave the city immediately. Nik has plenty of contingency plans in place; he'll take you somewhere safe."

"Without you?"

"For a little while," Elijah says, stepping back and straightening the cuffs of his sleeves, his face very pale.

"What are you going to do?"

"My job. Which is to keep him from this family he has already brought far too much harm to. Tell Niklaus I'll meet you all in England if I don't make it back to the house before you leave. He knows where."

"What if he's already got them?" he whispers, letting himself lean into Tim.

Elijah takes a very long time to adjust his sleeve cuffs once more. "Then run for a very long time, brother."

He vanishes.

Tim's heart beats very loudly against his back, his chin grazing the top of Kol's head. "Fuck. Jaysus- what kind of fucking monster is your da, if you're all afraid of him?"

He peels Tim's hands from his waist and scrapes his legs shakily together beneath him. "I want you to go to St. Stephen's."

"What?"

"If Father's been in town five minutes, he already knows where the house is, that I frequently pop in and out of this hotel, that you might be a bargaining chip for him. So go to the church, put on your best good little Irish Catholic face, make confession, whatever, just keep your hat low and act like a parishioner, and I'll swing round to pick you up once I've got Nik and Bekah. Or-" He falters just a little as he turns round to face the boy. "Or without them."

"Why don't I just come with you?"

"Because he'll either kill you in a flat second, or you'll get to be one of his many pawns. I want you out of the way. Go to the church, get on your knees in the confessional box -you remember how to do that, I know- and wait for me. All right?"

"Jesus." Tim takes off his cap and runs a hand through his hair. "Well, you can't- should you really just go stumbling off with him flitting around somewhere?"

"I'll get through to the house."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes; Nik's paranoid, I'm sneaky. I've managed to tiptoe my way into your heart, haven't I?" he asks, and half-heartedly tweaks the boy's nose.

Tim pulls him into a rushed kiss, both his hands on either of Kol's cheeks.

They separate.

"How long do I have to wait?"

"Forever, darling- isn't that how long I'm worth?" he asks playfully, but his smile hurts when he flashes it.

He cups his hands round the back of Tim's neck and pulls him down for a final bruising peck. "I'll see you in a bit. Be sure to tell the priest all about me, all right?"

"Nik!" he screams into the unlit house. "Nik!"

He flashes up the stairs into the office, the studio, the bedroom he has not shared with his brother for a very long time, circles round to the back balcony, puts his hand to his forehead for just a moment and takes three long breaths, because wasn't there something, underneath the pounding of his pulse, didn't he for just a moment catch that familiar thread that does not quite indicate life but neither does it imply death, wasn't there just a flicker of a heart just as quick as his own, a huff of breath, bloody listen-

"Nik?" he calls out. "Nik, you little fucking tit- Nik-"

"You don't have to shout, little brother," his brother says suddenly from the bottom of the stairs.

He hasn't done it in years, and Nik has got both hands clasped behind his back, so what are the chances of a little reciprocation, but relief- it doesn't calculate in any of that, it just skips your feet down three steps at a time and it loops one of your arms round your brother's neck and it pulls him into an embrace that strains both your ribs with a groan and it puts a smile on your face even though there is none on his, it rushes down all round you for so long that you might well as have washed up on some distant shore with the surf going foamy round your ankles, pressing you down flat into the sand until you breathe in enough beach to stove in both your lungs.

Nik takes a shuddery breath against his hair.

"Where's Bekah? Father's in the city; we've got to leave, now."

"I'm well aware of that. I've already sent her on ahead of me."

"So she's safe?"

"Yes. She's safe. Where is Elijah?"

"He'll try and meet us back here. If not, he said to meet him in England- he said you'd know where." He tries to pull away; Nik sets a hand on the back of his head and jerks him back in against his chest. "Nik, I'm having some very warm and squishy feelings right now as well, but we have to go. You can tell me all about how much you missed every hair on my head later."

Nik's voice is very shaky. "Do you know…out of all of them, I never thought it was going to be you. You were the only one I unconditionally trusted. So I guess this shouldn't actually come as any sort of surprise, now should it?"

"What are you blathering about, Nik?"

"I knew you were angry at me, Kol," he hisses, shoving him out and away to hold him at arms-length so roughly his head snaps back. "But to sic Mikael on me? To want me to spend my next thousand years dying at his hands because I hurt your little bloody feelings?"

"Why the hell would you even think that, you idiot?" he snaps right back at his brother. "I don't know why the hell he's here, but he tends to do that, if you haven't noticed- catch up with us throughout the centuries? Or did you forget all about fleeing Russia in 1812 and heading off for France with Bekah while Elijah and I went to Greece? It's what we do, Nik. We run, he chases."

"Did you forget, I have an entire network in place here- I have a whole bloody fucking system set up to inform me of any Mikael-related news nearly before Mikael knows of it himself, and do you know what it told me? That what brought Mikael running this time was my own family. One little brother in particular, who was hurt. Who apparently wanted to pay me back far beyond a few slaughtered minions and a broken painting or two."

"You murdered my own bloody mother and I kept it a secret for 900 bloody years- you think I would just go on and sink the knife into your back because you dinged up my feelings a bit?" He grips Nik by the shirt collar, swallows down the little crack that tries to put itself through to his voice. "Do you have any idea how many times you've hurt my feelings throughout the centuries, Nik?" Nik looks away; he gives him a little shake. "Nik."

"Someone saw you do it, Kol," Nik says, but there is no anger in his voice anymore, just a whole lot of fatigue pinching flat the edges.

"They were lying."

"They were compelled, brother."

"I didn't do it, Nik. Nik- no matter what you've said or done to me, everything I have ever done has been to annoy you, because how else am I supposed to get noticed, with Bekah and Elijah around? I break your toys, I muddle up your plans- I don't betray you, Nik."

Nik looks down at the floor, his throat working. "Why?" he asks when he can look back up at last, and if he isn't mistaken there's a bit of shine to Nik's eyes he hasn't seen in a very long time, perhaps not since he stood over Mother with her heart dripping in his hand and he stared for so long at this piece of the woman who slid him from between her thighs and then left him to his father. "I don't want you to lie to me anymore, I just want to know why, Kol. I thought-" He licks his lips, drops his head, shuts his eyes with a breath through his nose. "I thought I had one person I could trust, who would just-" He takes another breath through his nose. "Love me anyway. Bekah always comes crawling back, but you -you, brother- you never even leave in the first place."

He loosens his grip on Nik's collar as his brother lifts his hands to cup his cheeks, so like Elijah's gesture of a mere fifteen minutes ago, his hands just a touch rougher, more callused, his fingers gentler, his head putting itself to that calculating angle of the predator even as his nose scrunches with the sudden effort of staving off his tears. "Do you know why I'm telling you this? Because you're going into a box next to Finn. I probably won't let you out again. I hope your moment of petty little comeuppance was worth it, little brother."

"Nik, no," he snaps, and he feels the dagger prick his back.

He puts up quite the fight, his little brother.

But he triumphs in the end as he always does.

Some men -many men he's known- measure their worth in conquerings such as this, on the one weighing platform their own boot, and on the other a corpse, for where would Napoleon, Genghis, Frederick the Great reside in the annals of history if not for their victories of blood and bone?

But this one-

This one was the brother who loved him, so steadily, mate.

He sets Kol in his lap and he takes the dagger from the only place he could bear to stick it, through the back and into the heart, and he transfers it to his chest, so that at least this last of his youngest brothers may rest comfortably in his bed of silk and wood, and then he just holds him for a bit.

Elijah finds them like this, his chin on Kol's head, Kol limp in his arms, the house silent all round them, not a settling creak to be heard.

"Niklaus, what have you done?" he asks with that resignation of the continually disappointed.

He presses his cheek to his brother's head, and pushes his free palm into both his eyes, screwing them tightly shut against his hand. "I need another moment with him."

"Father's coming, Niklaus."

"I know." He swallows round the lump in his throat. "Go on and catch up with Bekah. I sent her ahead in one of the cars with a few bodyguards. They'll stop across the river, in Hattiesburg. I'll meet you both there."

"Niklaus-"

"I said I need a bloody minute with him, Elijah," he snaps.

His brother lingers for a moment longer, and then with the soft hiss of air displaced too quickly, he disappears.

Do you know what his little brother would say?

Piss off, Nik.

He always toed that infinitesimal line between too far and just acceptable, did Kol.

He didn't lie, little brother. That is the advantage to the ears of dead men: in one and out the other, isn't that right?

But he did-

He did think he had someone who would love him in spite of, who never would stray far. He wants to say, Kol- he wants to say it's all right, finding out differently, because to what else has he become accustomed, over the years, but not you, brother.

Not you.

That one hurts quite a very lot.

The Other Side, 2013

She is very pale today, but she has a smile on her face.

Is that for him?

It doesn't matter; he'll give it back anyway.

That's what smiles are for.

"To what do you owe the honor?" he asks, bowing over her hand.

"I was wondering if I could just…sit here for a while. With you," Bonnie Bennett says, and he thinks-

Once a girl who died asked this of him.

He was still nearly human, and he loved her, but there are some not made for this kingdom of monsters, and so when he fed to her the blood she had to guppy in through lips already red with the dark spray of the sword she took to her gut, when she took her last breath and then she sat up in his arms and she screamed until he rocked her into silence, she looked up at him, and she told him no.

Today I end here.

Help me get through it?

Bekah came for him afterward.

They held hands until he could be a man about it again.

Are you leaving him too, Bonnie Bennett?

One, two, three, breathe.

You are already dead, boy.

You died thrice.

It wasn't so bad; you survived; you walked a thousand shores, thundered off a thousand guns, raised the dust of arctic plains, Sahara hills, loved much, let go more, buried what you could not shake off, carried on as all things must-

You know how to shoulder sinking heart, crippled stomach, knotted throat.

But she's got a nice smile.

Not many people do, when they look at him, you know?

"No jokes for me today?" she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

"What do you want? Something from the naughty side or the Nik? I'll give you a little taste of each. Naughty: What's the difference between a rabbi and a priest?
A rabbi cuts them off; a priest sucks them off. Nik: What do frogs do with paper? Rip-it!" He lifts both his eyebrows. "Which will it be, darling?"

"Is there a third category? One that's actually funny?" she asks, and she tries to laugh, he sees it bulge in her throat, he watches it ripple through her shoulders, cause a brief wake on her pale sweat-smeared face, touch off a little spark in her eyes, and then she falls down.

He catches her around the waist. "Bonnie?"

Her head falls limply forward against his chest.

"Bonnie?"

"Kol," she says, and then she lets out a scream to wake the bloody dead.

"Why don't you pop round Marcel's first, and let him know that he'll be sharing with us the use of his finest minions. I don't really care what he has to say to that, Elijah. I want an army."

He clicks over to the other line. "Tim? Anything? All right; keep your eyes skinned, mate. I'll be there in no more than an hour. Don't let anyone leave."

He clicks back to the other line. "Elijah? I've changed my mind. Leave the negotiations to me. I've a team at the Monteleone. Head for the hotel; I'll meet you there in an hour. Make sure you roll up those nice sleeves of yours, brother," he says with a grim little smile, and he disconnects the call with a tap of his finger.

"What's going on?" Caroline demands, following him down the stairs he skips two at a time, jacket over his arm.

"Can't talk now, love. I've got some genocide to commit," he replies over his shoulder, and he throws the door wide.

"Bonnie?" He gives her a jostle, lets her slither down to touch her knees to the grass, follows her to his own knees, takes his hands from her waist to cup her damp cheeks between his palms, hears his heart trip once, stall indefinitely, turn over with a little shudder of all the breath knotted into his throat as she lifts her head, looks him straight in the eye-

"I thought I could keep them out," she says, fumbling her hands up to grip him by the shoulders, to scrunch his shirt in balls beneath her fists, and then she screams again.

"Klaus, wait!"

He whips round to point his finger at her. "Stay here with Rebekah, Caroline. Don't leave the house."

"No! What the hell do you mean, you've got some genocide to commit? You don't just drop that and then run out the door!"

He swirls his coat round behind him to slip his arms through the sleeves, and he gives the lapels a firm jerk to settle them neatly across his collarbones as she stands glaring just slightly down at him from the stoop, arms round her middle, curls flattened down her shoulders.

"Please don't just leave," she says quietly.

He takes a step up to put himself eye to eye with her, and he takes one of her flattened curls very tenderly in his hand, running the back of one finger all the way along to its end.

"If the witches really are trying to raise Mikael, we have to stop them. I already put my father precisely where he belongs; I'm not doing it again. Considering how nicely they bent their knees in response to my indiscriminate slaughter of innocents during that parade they thought to use as some sort of demonstration as to how helpless I am in their thrall, I thought another reminder might be in order."

"Who's in the hotel?" she whispers.

He flicks his eyes away from hers, and he licks his lips. "A full guest registry, some locked doors, and a few very hungry vampires."

"Klaus-"

"I will work my way through every single shop, residence, sordid little alleyway in this town, if I have to. Until they've decided they've had enough, that it's time to come out and face me personally. It's us or them, Caroline."

"Ok, but you can't just walk around murdering the whole city! You can only compel the media and the police so far. You don't think someone's going to notice something, when an entire freaking city shows up dead? I know you think you are completely unbeatable, and invulnerable, but some of us are not, and we would kind of like to keep this whole supernatural freak show thing on the down low, if you don't mind, and I'm sorry, but I have not been around long enough to stand here and not even bat one single teeny little lash at the thought of you going all…Ripper Stefan on like a gajillion-"

"Caroline."

"What?"

"Stay here. You'll be all right. I'll be back in a little while."

He turns, stops, looks down at his feet for a moment, lifts his eyes slowly up to hers, closes the distance between them with one awkwardly hesitant step.

He fumbles it a bit, this kiss.

It is not a thing of sweaty bed sheets, stained innocence, sated hormones, after all.

He is still not quite sure where to place his hand when she curls her own round his necklaces and she stands on her tiptoes to lean herself into him like they're a single entity, like she bloody wants them to be, like his touch is not something to be shunned but courted, her mouth having at him with such force he nearly stumbles backward off the step.

"I'll be back," he says against her forehead, and then he blurs away into the rain.

"Take a breath, Bonnie."

"I can't- it hurts-"

"Shh shh shh; do it anyway. Take a nice deep one. All right? In through your nose; there we are." He brushes his hands down her neck, and he steadies them against her shoulders. "Take another one," he coaxes, reaching up to gently stroke a strand of bang from her eye, to secure it behind her ear, to softly draw his thumb from lobe to jaw line.

She inhales a breath that is nearly a sob.

Shh; shh.

Just lie here, darling, he said to that girl who died black and flaking with his blood on her lips.

It's all right.

It won't hurt forever.

That's what you say, when you love someone.

It's how you tell a lie that is not wicked.

You hold them in your arms, and you smile, and you tell this lie not for them but for yourself, and they bubble up a few final breaths, they stretch a smile painted red and they go peacefully to their six feet of moist black earthworms because you will dust off their ashes and carry on about your life, but Bonnie-

He doesn't have one anymore.

Remember?

Remember he died alone on a cold floor, one minute before his brother burst in through the door; remember Bekah shed a tear, Elijah blinked for just a moment, remember he tried so hard to square his shoulders, to bear this with a smile, remember he buried his face in your shoulder one night and he let himself be a child about this just until you stirred and you began to open your eyes-

What he's saying-

What he means is-

Thank you for keeping him company.

But don't stop now.

Please.

She tips her face back from his chest, and he leans himself down to meet her forehead to forehead, taking his thumb in another soft line from lobe to jaw line.

"There are witches, a lot of them, trying to draw on my powers."

He keeps his eyes half-shuttered, his lips half an inch from her own. "To bring you back?"

"No," she chokes out, and another jolt cramps her, draws her upward, bumps her nose against his own. "They don't want me. They want Mikael. A Bennett witch has to drop the veil. I guess they couldn't find anybody else." She lets out a breath against his mouth, sinks forward a little more against him, clamps her hand round the retch that surges from belly to lips.

"Tell them to piss off."

A damp laugh wrenches open her lips. "I'm trying."

"What do you need me to do?" he asks, trailing his thumbs beneath her eyes. "I told you I'm not letting Nik come over here; I just got rid of him."

"I think," she starts, and a heave, a breath, a squeeze of her eyes and she stabilizes against him, the hand still balled up in his shirt relaxing just a touch against his shoulder. "I think I can draw on the power they're channeling through me and use it to…seal off the veil from this side. So he can't get through."

"All right; then do it."

She opens her eyes.

She keeps her forehead against his own. "You can't see them anymore, if I do that. You won't be able to cross over. They'll be gone, Kol."

The sky breaks itself open above his head.

The street unfurls itself in slick black carnival reflections before him.

His breath disperses in a fine white mist.

His boots ricochet themselves off the pavement with a rattle to shame the rain.

"Elijah," he says. "I can smell your cologne from a block away, brother. There's no need to creep about behind me, fretting over how I'll react to the fact that for some reason you've gone and completely defied my orders instead of waiting for me at the Monteleone, as I asked. But I'm sure you've good reason for it. So let's hear it, hmm?" he calls back over his shoulder, holding his hands out to either side.

"My apologies for this, Niklaus," Elijah says right in his ear, and then his brother's rough palms press themselves to either cheek, and he knows nothing more.

He unearths Niklaus' phone from his jacket pocket.

"Timothy?" he says into it.

"Niklaus is indisposed at the moment. But he wanted me to communicate to you a change in plans. Do not harm the humans. Wait for further instructions. Either Niklaus or myself will be in touch."

He hangs up.

He slips Niklaus' phone into his own jacket and adjusts his sleeves.

The sky leaks itself into his brother's sightlessly staring eyes.

They stare at one another for a very long moment.

Life goes like this.

You did not ink your finger to the contract when mother pushed you out between thighs sticky with blood and sweat and afterbirth, but there is writ in stone a pact by which all man must abide, and it ends here.

It's only a story, after all.

There once was a boy called Kol.

He does not remember it, but he was born, and he signed in blood this contract of man, and then like all other boys, he lived for a while, raised a bit of hell, mashed his joys and his disappointments into the same bittersweet unguent, and then he laid down his head, and he shut his eyes one final time.

You might recognize this story.

You will try to say yours is different.

You will try to tell it a different way.

You will stamp into your heart the firm conviction that your generation has pressed upon this planet that has murdered dinosaurs, frozen continents, boiled oceans its indelible mark, and you will say to yourself, but what would become of all that space, because how much of it you span, you couldn't possibly get your arms round it, this shape wedged into the hearts of friend, family, foe, inked in the immortal print of man, stitched onto that tapestry of history where hangs your bright little star, right there, nestled among the towers of monarchs and the pyramids of pharaohs.

But you are meant to be softened.

You should not always be a sharp edge, prickling away at the chests of brothers.

900 years, 3 deaths.

It's time for him to bid you all adieu, isn't it?

He takes a deep breath, and she rises with him when he does it, loosens her grip just a touch on his shoulders, smiles with such resignation he knows that she looks into the futures of her friends, and she sees them with a whole narrative unraveled before them, barely the first fresh page touched, and she'll regret it, because eighteen is selfish, it wants another chance, it needs a second go, but life goes like this.

It's only a story.

"Do it."

He spends a lot of time, ironing out his voice before he says it.

"Do you want to say good-bye?" she whispers.

"Oh, I don't think there's time for that," his father says from behind him.

"Ok, I cannot just sit around here waiting for your brother to murder his psycho way through the entire town."

"Oh, he's my brother now, is he?" Rebekah leans back against the couch and crosses her legs.

"Yes! When he's acting like this, he's your brother, and you bear all responsibility for him, I never touched him, in fact we're probably practically strangers who definitely did not defile Elijah's study and sort of kind of probably traumatize him in the process despite the fact that he's probably seen, like, a bajillion freakier positions than that, because I'm sure Klaus worked his way through the entire Kama Sutra with every single member of every past performance of Cirque de Soleil or whatever-"

"You're like a bloody faucet! Shut it off," Rebekah snaps.

"Sorry! I babble when I get nervous, ok? I think that's kind of a normal reaction when your dad might just possibly be on his way here now to end us all and your brother is running around sacrificing humans at the altar of creepy and Stefan is still out there somewhere because he and his hair need a moment alone to brood prettily and are therefore too busy to answer any of my texts!"

"Someone's ignoring you? Well who could have predicted this plot twist?"

"Shut up! Be helpful for once, ok? Tell me…tell me it's going to be ok. Tell me this is going to pass, and we're all going to come through it, because I spend so much time telling myself that, I spend so much of my life just taking a deep breath and getting through something, and I just need- I need someone else to step in for once, and do this for me, because sometimes it's just…it's so hard."

Rebekah is quiet for a very long time.

She uncrosses her legs.

She leans forward with a sigh. "Get your jacket; we're going to look for Stefan. You're too twitchy shut up in here."

"No- I'll go by myself. Sophie's still here, and I would appreciate it if someone would stick around to make sure nobody sneaks in to stake her while the boys are off playing with their pants around their ankles and their measuring tapes in hand."

"How do you know I won't do it myself?"

"Because there is way too much testosterone in this house. And because then who would you have to pick apart for their fashion choices? Elijah just wears a suit every day, and Klaus wears the same Henley and jeans combination and those kind of douchey hipster necklaces."

"Don't tell him that. He thinks the necklaces may him look 'edgy' or artistic or something idiotic like that. Plus he thinks it's funny to wear a cross."

"Well, don't tell him I said this, but they're kind of stupid. But they do make a nice handhold."

"Oh, let's see- reference number 1800 to sleeping with my brother. I think that alone entails the long and drawn-out demise of poor, helpless Sophie."

Caroline holds out her hand.

Rebekah picks up her jacket from the couch arm and flicks it across the room.

She flashes into it, and flips her curls out over the collar.

"Stefan and I will be back. Miss me already?"

"Like the dagger Nik sticks in my heart every third Sunday or so."

"If Klaus for some reason gets back before me and throws a hissy fit over me being gone, tell him I said to bite me. He doesn't get to tell me what to do. I was Miss Mystic Falls."

"You know you can't still try and use that as a reason to boss him around 150 years from now."

"Watch me," she says, and she yanks the front door open to take one long breath of rain-scented sky, and she edges her foot out onto the front step.

"Caroline."

She looks back over her shoulder.

"Be careful," Rebekah says softly, and then she lifts her chin haughtily and she cocks one hip, and she crosses both arms over her chest. "I'm saying that for Nik's sake, not mine."

"Right."

There is a tiny hitch in her chest, a compression of her heart, a brief throttling of her throat. "Should I just go ahead and schedule the bi-monthly bestie facials when I get back, then?"

"Get out, or I'm eating you."

He stands up very slowly, keeping himself between Bonnie and his father.

Mikael has got his usual shitty little smile on his face.

"You don't want to trap yourself over here with me, Kol. Not if you ruin this. I'm only trying to reunite you with your brother- isn't that what you want? You always did cling to his leg like a kicked dog. Niklaus brings that out in people."

He hears Bonnie fumble herself awkwardly to her feet, rustle backward a step, take one unsteady breath, curl her fingers into tremulous fists, scuff her shoes uncertainly about in these bright green blades.

His heart, surging in his ears.

The subtler snare of Father's own.

The whisper of the leaves kicking themselves into a round of chatter among silent white limbs.

"Go on," he says casually. "Make a run for it. I can hold him off."

Mikael smiles again.

It's very like Nik's, sometimes, this smile.

Bonnie turns.

He puts himself in Father's path with his own shitty little smile, and out flashes his hand to take his old man by the chest, to plunge his fingers deep enough to scrape, and then there comes the crack of twigs splintering underfoot and a blast of white to smudge the faultless sky, and he takes a knee in the grass, his wrist hanging by a thread.

Mikael steps over him.

He gets his good hand round his father's ankle, and he jerks.

It puts the old man into a tree twenty feet away, and he doesn't like to stretch his tales of course (pecker like an elephant trunk), so he understands that it was not his mere strength of arm that tossed the old bastard like a doll into a trunk that sheers off with the force of this impact, that this sudden cyclone which whips into his eyes bits of leaf and blade and twig perhaps had a thing or two to do with it, that Bonnie has bought him just a moment to gather his legs beneath him and to cradle his wrist forgotten against his chest and to snap from the branches nearest him an improvised stake, splintered round the end.

He twirls it as he advances.

He breaks Father's arm, his collarbone, leaves in place of his temple moist red sponge, grinds the old man's kneecap to powder.

"Kol!" Bonnie shouts, and then Mikael has him by the throat, and round him carousels sky, ground, forest, what is it about death that hurts so bloody bad, he wants to know, and then he slides down the tree against which he has landed, stake still in his hand, and he spits up blood and teeth.

Mikael cocks his head, and puts himself back together with a brief shudder that clicks into place everything he has dislodged.

His feet slip beneath him, he butter fingers the stake, he fumbles around with one hand to the ground, both eyes on his father, everything sloshing about inside him, bile in his throat, blood in his ears, anxiety in his palms-

Father boots him in the chin.

He rolls with it, tucks himself into a neat little back somersault that puts him once more on his feet, kicks off the tree behind him to bury a hook shot into Father's face that sprays his nose across the grass.

Bonnie looms up like some sort of divine goddess, hair in a rage, the trees and the grass and father himself all bending themselves in helpless devotion, the latter screaming, the branches all round him in a chorus to nearly match these animal cries, and now she whips something through the eye of this storm to find his hand, and he comes up holding the stake he left behind, splintered end first.

He reverses it with a deft toss.

He drives its tip through Mikael's chest so hard it splits both man and branch down the middle.

It's quite slow, the climax of moments such as these.

Mikael falls for a very long time.

He bounces once when he hits the grass.

The leaves and the branches and the grass all carry on their sibilant jabber for several elongated moments, and then slowly the wind sucks itself away like a tide tonguing itself a new line in the sand, very gradual increments of retreat, and he flicks his eyes up to Bonnie, to watch her standing with feet planted, hair settling, shoulders heaving.

She sways.

He clamps his hand round her elbow, but she shakes him off, and she stands alone, and what a jolt of pride he gets, all the way down to his guts.

"How long will he be out?" she asks shakily.

"Not very long. You shake death off pretty quickly, when you're already dead. Gilbert always comes back in about thirty seconds. I counted once." He gives her a little push. "Run. He's down; I can take care of him. Thank you, though, Sir Bonnie, for helping out a damsel in distress. You can collect your kiss later. And maybe a little something extra, for your troubles. It was quite a nasty dragon, wasn't it?"

"Kol-"

"I'm not kidding around now, Bennett," he interrupts her solemnly. "Leave. Do whatever you can."

"And if I'm wrong? If I can't channel the witches, if I can't do anything?"

"Then I'll sit here for a thousand years, and I'll kill him as many times as I have to."

He smiles.

His story ended a year ago, or perhaps three hours ago, he never can tell over here, and no one much cares about the epilogue anyway.

The important thing is he died, his family didn't, and if there are no happy endings, there are happy long enoughs.

Nik, Bekah, 'Lijah-

Always remember to ask yourselves, what would Kol do?

The answer, of course, is shag it out.

Remember that.

He had a memoir written about him, after all.

"Kol-"

"Get out of here, Bonnie."

She lingers for another moment. "I'm going to come back."

He smiles again.

A lot of people have said that to him.

Do you know what comes back for him?

Time.

That's it.

"All right," he says, and he keeps the crack from his voice with 900 years of practice.

She can't run as fast as him, of course; no one can.

But it doesn't really seem like that, now does it, when there's a back put to you and footsteps sprinting not toward but away?

He watches her through the trees until even the very sharp lens of his supernatural eyes can no longer bring her into focus, and then with hardly a sound, Mikael sits up, and stabs him through the stomach.

"Elijah, what the hell have you done?" she demands as he strides in through the front door with Nik draped bloody princess style in his arms, neck flopping awkwardly, eyes open eerily.

"Niklaus and I differ slightly on how this situation with the witches needs to be handled," he says mildly, and sets Nik down on the sofa.

"He's going to kill you when he wakes up, you realize that, don't you? Finn's 900 years in his coffin will look positively humane, next to what Nik's going to inflict on you."

"Where's Caroline?" Elijah asks, removing his jacket.

"She went to go find Stefan."

Elijah carefully turns up the sleeves of his dress shirt. "Well, then, he'll have another direction to aim his tantrum, won't he, sister?" he points out, loosening the tie at his throat.

Nik's foot twitches.

His lashes float down to touch the moons of fatigue beneath his eyes.

His chest jumps with the force of the inhale that shoots him upright against the cushions.

"Here's what's going to happen, boy," Mikael hisses in his ear, pinning his face to the flat white bark of the tree in front of him, stake still in his stomach, his fingernails scrabbling for purchase against this smooth silk trunk, not a bloody knot to be found, the branches just out of reach, the leaves still tremulously protesting the blow his sternum has dealt to their base, his right hand in pieces between trunk and torso, his nose crushed flat against the wood, one of his legs dead beneath him, his stomach still piteously seeping. "I will kill every single one of them, starting with Niklaus. When it's done, I'll take myself with them, so I can join you all over here, and I will spend all of eternity ensuring that when you see that little coward, it's only to watch him scream and cry, and die, over and over again. You will not slobber after him like a puppy; there will be nothing left of him to weep over. He'll spend his death in pieces. And if you try to seek solace in the arms of the rest of this family, they will suffer the same fate. And the witch. You like her, do you?" Mikael presses him even harder into the tree, the stake forcing itself deeper, a little trickle making its way from his lips to his chin, his throat conjuring up only phlegm in the place of protest. "Do you think she can hide from me forever?"

He slides his hand down between himself and the tree, and wraps his fingers round the very edge of the stake.

"She'll hate you, by the time I'm through with her. She'll spend every waking moment understanding that every cut I make, every tear, every break- that's all courtesy of Kol Mikaelson's love. This family is a plague, boy."

He coughs a clot onto the bark.

He flexes his fingers round the stake.

"You were the worst of them, after Niklaus. That's what you get, for modeling yourself after that little coward."

Father cracks his head so hard against the tree his knees loosen and fold beneath him.

He spits another little stream down onto his chin.

There is another crack, a great wash of white before his eyes, the black pinwheels of consciousness on the verge of retreat, ringing in his ears, another surge in his mouth, more bitter metal wetness down his chin-

Mikael breaks his spine like a piece of candy.

He screams.

His hand slips uselessly from the stake, dangles numbly down his side, joins the rest of him in an awkward accordion pleat on the ground.

"Do you want to see how much the witch likes you?" Mikael asks, and picks him up by the scruff of the neck.

Elijah takes Nik by the throat and pins him back down against the couch, unwinds his tie one-handed, tosses it toward the chair where he has draped his jacket.

"What the hell do you think you're doing-"

"I told you to exercise some common sense and subtlety in regards to your little war here, Niklaus. You'll perhaps be surprised to know that doesn't include slaughtering the entire city."

"Get off me," Nik snarls, and then they are at one another like bloody dogs.

"Come out, come out, Bonnie Bennett."

He feels one of his vertebrae re-link itself with an excruciating snap, the subsequent twitch of life stirring down the dead meat of his right leg to touch his foot, electricity in his belly, static round his waist, all of this white noise below his belt beginning to reset as his spine corrects itself disc by agonizing disc-

"He can't die, of course. But he can feel a lot of pain, for a very long time."

The trees do not stir.

"I know you aren't blessed with the hearing of my children, so I'll turn it up a notch," Mikael calls, and then he pauses for just a moment, and he kicks a hole through three of his ribs.

The cry he muffles into the grass is very red.

He tongues a tooth from its spurting socket down onto the ground.

"Nothing?"

Father bends his arm until the back of his hand touches his shoulder.

He buries his face in the grass and he breathes in through his nose, one, two, three, you know what to do, boy, let out a laugh, give us a smile, haven't you a quip-

"You see what else you've picked up from Niklaus, then," Mikael says, and he smiles just a little as he bends that arm further still. "Nobody cares."

There is the squelch of Mikael's fingers probing round his kidney, the white-hot charge of this into his belly, up his throat, the rattling of his breath in his nostrils, the chafing of it inside his throat, fingernails in his palm, teeth in his lip-

He throws up into the grass.

Father stomps the ball of his shoulder.

"Both of you stop it!" she shrieks, blurring after them up the stairs as they ricochet off walls, put themselves through staircase banisters, lock themselves nearly chest to chest, Nik's arm swinging, Elijah's leg buckling, Nik's blood in a smear across Elijah's knuckles, Elijah's in a spatter through Nik's beard. "I spent four bloody days with the renovators after the witches launched their little assault on this place! Nik! I said stop it, you idiot!"

She throws a vase at Nik's head.

It knocks him upside the temple, reels him back into the wall, exposes for Elijah an opening he uses to shoulder their brother over the side of the railing.

Nik lands with a crunch on his shoulder, rolls himself just barely out of reach of Elijah's flawless Ferragamos as he swings himself over the banister and he lands two inches shy of Nik's stupid prat head, kips himself back up onto his feet, whips his elbow round into Elijah's jaw with the noisy crack of something giving way inside the mouth of their eldest brother.

Elijah spits a tooth onto the floor, and smears away the trickle of blood down his chin before it can reach his shirt.

He backhands Nik across the face.

"Stop it," Bonnie says, but she does it from her knees.

Mikael lifts him up a little higher.

He doesn't see her fall -bit of a veil over his eyes; head wounds bleed like the stumps of fallen soldiers- but he hears her carefully step from behind wherever she has stashed herself and he listens to the impact of each knee in the grass and there's a hand round this demand she makes to his father, very strangled, and where before the trees chattered themselves like old biddies passing round their gossip like teacakes, he now hears only the hesitant murmuring of leaves not yet committed to the tempest.

"It's too late anyway," she tells them, looking up through her hair, blood round her nose and in little bubbles on her lips. "It's done."

He feels a little jab, separate from the phantom prods of his father rooting round his organs.

Nik.

Don't forget him.

He knows he said differently mere minutes/days/seconds ago, but he's done something rather unselfish here, and wouldn't it be nice of you to throw him a crumb every so often, to recall you had a brother Kol, he was sometimes not as bad as he seemed, he loved his family till the end.

He did.

He does.

He will.

Burn a candle for him every so often, will you, big brother?

"Too late?" his father asks, hauling him up onto his feet and thrusting him round in front. "That's very unfortunate for my son. I think you better undo it," he says calmly, and then Mikael presses his hand into the battered end of this stake still hung up in his guts until he goes screaming to his knees with a belly full of fire.

Elijah walks him almost nonchalantly into the wall of the parlor where they have backed themselves in a blur of teeth and fists and feet.

Nik's head impacts the plaster noisily.

He hacks a wet red cough all over the wallpaper.

Elijah holds him on his feet by the collar of his shirt.

"Niklaus," he says, and it's not often there is a waver in the voice of this backbone of the Mikaelsons, but she hears one now, and for just a moment she remembers a very white night, the snow falling on Moscow very softly, putting on their manor the finishing touches of a ceremonial cake, this same crack running through Elijah's voice as he told her of all the things Mikael did, and the ones he didn't.

"There is a different way to accomplish this, brother. You don't have to face Father alone. Not this time, Niklaus."

Nik is very still, hanging in Elijah's hand like a child.

"I've heard that before, Elijah," he says roughly.

"I know you have. But it's time for it to mean something, Niklaus. Rebekah?" He cranes his head round to look at her.

"I don't want to run from him anymore, Elijah," she whispers. "I wanted a life, not a handful of moments between sprinting."

"We're not going to run, sister. We will face him together. We are down to three; it's time for the Mikaelsons to present a united front. Father has pursued us when we are at our most vulnerable, at odds with one another, scattered about the world. This time we meet him head to head."

She looks between them both. "Nik?"

He wipes the blood from his mouth.

He looks down at his feet.

"Elijah, I don't- I can't-"

"I won't leave you this time, Nik," she tells him very quietly. "I'm here to stay. Even if you intend to keep that annoying blonde twit around for the rest of your life. I'm going to stay," she says, and a breath squares her shoulders and lifts her chin, and she offers up a very tremulous smile, just on the verge of breaking, but it's a start, Nik.

Don't let her down?

He looks up at her from beneath his brows. "You'll change your mind, Bekah. You always change your mind."

"Then give me a reason not to, Nik."

"Stop!" Bonnie yells, and through this thin sliver of sight he has cracked open beneath the mess of half his bloody head in a red paste down his forehead and over his lids, he sees the trees jump to do her bidding, the strands of her bangs take flight, the shirt about her shoulders whip itself to whitecaps.

She hunches forward, vomits up a gout of blood to match the puddle beneath his own hands, stretches her arms out with puppet awkwardness, dangles like this with her head down, her hands out, the storm roaring round her, the grass rustling beneath his cheek, branches clattering amongst themselves, sky impervious, Father more so-

"Step forth, and take the hands of the Bennett witch, Mikael," Bonnie says mechanically.

Mikael twists the stake again.

He lets go.

He leans down to loop his hands round Bonnie's wrists, to bring her almost gently to her feet, to thread his fingers through her own.

"Surge et egredere de morte."

The trees bend themselves nearly double.

The grass uproots itself in a bright cyclone.

He yanks the stake from his guts with a little cry.

"Et spiritum fovere."

He spits another mouthful of blood into the grass.

"Nobis cor tuum."

He fumbles his feet up underneath him.

"Surge et egredere de morte."

A head makes a very interesting sound, when it separates from the spinal column.

It's quite indescribable, actually.

Try it for yourself sometime.

Mikael crumples, but Bonnie clutches him still, folding down with him, her lips moving restlessly, the wind howling ceaselessly, his hair whipping him round the eyes, his jacket buffeting his ribs, his shout springing from his lips to carry itself off over her head. "Bonnie, let go of him! Bonnie! Let go!"

He pitches Father's head into the woods.

"I can't! Et spiritum fovere; Nobis cor tuum; Surge et egredere de morte; Surge et egredere de morte; et spiritum fovere; nobis cor tuum; surgeetegrederedemorteetspiritumfoverenobiscortuumsurgeetegrederedemorte-"

He breaks each of her fingers at the knuckle.

She screams.

There is a final surge of this breath from the bellies of spells, unearthing from the grass the long roots of these flawless white trees, their trunks echoing off one another, the branches tangling in Domino collisions, the leaves adding themselves to the featureless blue sky like one of Nik's less structured paintings, a spot here, a flurry there-

He wraps her in his arms.

He takes a glancing blow to the shoulder, a more direct one to the ribs, spies his opening, flashes them both toward it with the woods coming undone all around them, Mikael's corpse vanishing in a snow drift of trunks, his eyes veiling themselves in the pale milk of the blind as they fill with the grit of trees torn to confetti, Bonnie's hands hooked to claws against his collar-

He ducks a tree, sidesteps a branch, hurls them both beyond the eye of this slowly settling storm.

The wood gives another lurch, adds to Mikael's pyre another two crosspieces, conjures up one last mushroom cloud of leaves stripped from their nests-

Bonnie winds his collar tight enough to choke-

He bends down to set his cheek to her hair-

And against his chest she coughs up another gout of blood, and then the wind twists itself from the deformed limbs of the trees and peels itself back from the disheveled roots of the grass and she slumps limply forward, leaning all her weight against him.

He holds her there for a moment, his cheek still pressed to her head, one hand lifting to gently touch the hair down her back.

She disentangles her fingers slowly from his collar.

He lets her pull back from his chest.

"You all right?" he asks.

"I'm ok," she says, and she gives him a smile that is just a little crooked, and lifts one hand to wipe the blood from her nose.

"How are the fingers?" he asks, and raises one hand to his lips, to kiss the very tips.

"Looks like they're fine."

"Yes; I have very magical lips. I'll show you some more tricks later."

She has no return quip, just a bit of a smile, a very little thing, quite odd, but she's got quite the crowd in her pretty little head, and Mikael wrung from her the strength of ten gods (Kols), and so he won't follow this up with any commentary on her lack of protest, he will brush the hair very tenderly from her eyes, he will return her smile with one of his own, and perhaps after this is over, he'll sit three branches above her in one of their favorite trees, and he'll tell her about this family-sized hole in his chest, and he'll let her do with it what she will, because sometimes he gets very tired, you know, he does not want to make believe, and if at any point there is a moment to take off the gloves, to throw down the mask, it must be here, where all things end.

"It'll take Father a while to dig himself out of all that, without a head. Can you still do it? Can you seal off the veil?"

"Yes," she says.

"I'll be right here. You'll be all right. Just do it quickly, darling."

"Kol," she says.

"There's a prize for it, afterward, but you're being timed, so better hurry it along." He taps his wrist. "Bonus points for witty puns about magic. Nik would probably say something like, "Magicians assistants are highly sawed after." It has to be worse than that. Come on, darling- make me vomit."

"I can send you back."

He's still holding her hand, and of course he noticed that, he notices every little brush, whether meaningful or less, but suddenly the warmth of it goes numb in his fingers, he is holding a block, he has swallowed another, there is a sudden give in his chest, another stab in his belly.

"Before I close off the veil on this side. You can go home. I can send you back instead of Mikael. They wanted an original vampire, didn't they?" She shrugs nonchalantly, she gives him her crooked smile, she steps back out of his reach.

"And you would come too?" he asks, and it's not a very good question, he's already got the answer to it, a bit of pressure in his heart, a rather tight grip round his throat, and he sees that she wishes he hadn't asked it, but he had to be sure, didn't he?

This is not a love story.

He just wanted to check.

"I can't seal off this side of the veil from the other side of it."

He buries both his hands in the pockets of his trousers. "So you'll stay here. To protect your friends."

She smiles again.

She doesn't let herself cry.

"It's what I do."

Neatly done, witch.

Save your friends, wrest this thorn from your side. Quite a flock of birds, with one stone.

Was it his- didn't he- did you not-

He doesn't want to know.

He won't make a joke about good-bye kisses.

Not now.

Not when he is so raw.

But he does smile.

It's what he's always been good at.

"Can you send me back with a fully rotational head, or anything like that? I want to see the look on Nik's face when I pop in through the door and I twist it round with one of those maniacal, moustache-twirling laughs. I think it'd do a lot for any remaining childhood fears of the dark that might still be lingering."

She laughs.

It's a very unsteady thing, but she gets it out anyway, and isn't that the point?

"I'll see what I can do."

She has not lost her smile, but it does slip a little.

One, two, three, you know what to do, boy.

He puts out his hands.

Nik is staring at her.

It's a very long moment, and then a thump from round the front of the house ruins it with a blink, and Elijah releases Nik's shirt to let him take a step forward, across the glossy parlor. "What was that?"

"Caroline back with Stefan in tow, I'm sure."

"And who let her leave?" he snaps. "I told you both to stay put."

"Yes, she actually had a few choice words about that. Apparently she doesn't like it when you boss her around. You could have picked a quieter one, Nik. Did you know she-"

"It's not Caroline," he interrupts. "She was wearing perfume today. I don't smell it."

"Maybe the rain washed it off."

"It's not her," he repeats, and something presses itself very small inside her, just as it did when she was very little, the shadows very large, and Nik had to sit beside her bed with a candle and a kind word, holding at bay the shades of monsters with his funny faces.

She hears another thump.

The sudden surge of Nik's heart, the answering swell of her own, the touch of tremor in Elijah's exhalation.

The front door splinters.

She listens to it clatter in pieces against the floor.

Nik steps forward.

She edges up to his shoulder; Elijah places himself at the other.

"Now who the hell would dare," Nik says with just that hint of a smirk in his voice, his shoulder a little unsteady against her own, and in one solid line, they go forth to face their father.

You can tell what he picked up from Nik.

The way he walks, for instance, with his hands out to either side, that little smirk which she has always wanted to wipe away like a bit of dirt with the crack of her palm, such a bloody blasé smugness to him, like the whole world ought to scrape about his feet with their tongues to his toes.

Beside her, Nik takes a breath, and he does not breathe again.

"Oh my God," she whispers.

Kol smiles up at them from the base of the stairs.

"Greetings, family."

A/N: Oh, hey- did I say I had no intention of bringing Kol back? WELL LOOKEE HERE SOMEONE'S PANTS ARE ON FIRE. I have been waiting for this moment for soooo long.

I do not know whether my version of the other side, nor the magic used by Bonnie, matches up with the current mythology, and frankly, I don't give a shit, because the show is confusing as fuck and contradicts itself every third scene anyway and I've decided everything can just kiss my ass, because, guys, Klaus just had a baby and cried like a little girl through the whole thing. HOW ABOUT NO. We do things my way.

I don't know what happened with Tim. He and Kol were both lonely, they struck up this nice little bromance, and then all of a sudden they were doing it. How this will play out in present day, with Kol back and Tim hanging around the original family once more, I've no idea. It was nearly 100 years ago that they were involved, after all, and Kol's going to need time to recover from Bonnie, but it will certainly be acknowledged and dealt with in one way or another. And I don't mean in a Julie Plec sort of 'of course we wouldn't have thrown a line in there like that if we didn't mean to follow through with it here have some three second sex against a tree WHAT'S YOUR FUCKING PROBLEM THEY DID IT DIDN'T THEY' way.

In the next one-shot: another crossover, a Rebekah-centric flashback, probably an unhealthy amount of murder, Caroline sassing the pants off everyone, Klefan bonding, and of course lots of 'der-herp I love my wife' from Klaus.