ever after

Author's note: I'm not sure that this is strictly canon, as I haven't watched TVD in years or ever watched TO (except some youtube vids). Though I tend to write more Klaroline, I ship Klebekah equally. I adore their fucked up co-dependency.

Disclaimer: I don't own either show, but I did, things would be drastically different.

Thus, with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names. ~ Khalil Gibran, The Forerunner: His Parables and Poems

Long ago when the woods of what we call Virginia grew thick and green and rough and so tall that they formed a natural canopy over much of the land, there lived a young girl.

And she is a lovely girl, large blue eyes and hair like spun gold, delicate fine features. Her father would spin her around in his arms until she giggled, calling her his beautiful, his good girl. And he would smile upon her mother, saying, "Esther, you have done good with this one."

Good indeed. Her beauty, he would say, is a gift of Freya and a mark of distinction for their family. Young Rebekah feels love for the goddess Freya well up in her soul. She doesn't know yet that there was another Freya, lost in a land that Rebekah has never seen. A Freya with eyes blue like her own. Her father is gentle where he is harsh with others. "Freya reborn," he would say, "my Freya."

Her mother would only nod, a bright spark of tears in her eyes, and return to her potions and salves and minding the other children. For a long time Rebekah thinks the tears are pride and joy, but she doesn't understand why her mother can't meet her eyes.

And all was well and good and right. Fine like the bright warm sun at the edge of the woods. Safe.

It is a long time before she learns that her beauty is a commodity to be used for her father's gain.

The breaking apart of her family begins long before Henrik's passing, or the arrival of Tatia, and certainly long before their mother's curse turned them all into monsters. Before even Elijah's birth.

Rebekah listens to the bards sing tales of heroes and the maids they loved, Valkyries, and that trickster Loki. When the gods still walked in Midgard and magick was not to be feared.

A Valkyrie. She's never heard anything more thrilling and asks her father how she can become one. He laughs and pats her head, but his eyes are cold. "If it is Odin's wish, but it is not mine. I should not wish such a life for my golden girl."

She smiles but chafes as though there are ropes constraining her into place.

"But I want to be a hero like my brothers," she says.

"One Valkyrie in this family is enough," Finn says. She doesn't understand what he means or why her father strikes him harshly. He sits down by the fire and wipes his bloodied lip in silence and gives no other acknowledgement of their father's rebuke.

But later, on her fifth nameday, Finn and Nik present her with a beaded necklace and a pendant etched with the symbols of the goddess Freya. Nik carved the figure himself, he says proudly, while the stern Finn tells her to speak no more of Valkyries or of Freya.

Finn is the oldest and tallest and most heroic of her brothers. Already he takes parts in raids beyond their small community, exploring the waters beyond the marshland, travelling far into the land of the natives. He speaks of foreign people and picks up languages that sound funny to Rebekah's ears. Soon, Elijah and Niklaus will join him and it will just be Kol and Rebekah at home with Mother who seems to grow colder every year. And baby Henrik who needs constant minding, and Rebekah doesn't want to be a minder. She wants to be a Valkyrie and see the worlds that Finn is beginning to know.

Still later that night, Nik curls his thin body around her, a shield against the sudden storm which marred her celebration. She doesn't have to tell him about her fright; she never does. Nik senses things as no one else, can feel the movement in weather, in nature, in sounds – so much so that it scares their parents, but it warms Rebekah.

He is her golden god, the one she loves above all.

He tells her that one day he will take her all around the world. Back to the old world from which their parents came and she will see jewels that glitter brighter than the stars at night.

"And we will dance at the courts of kings?" she asks.

"You will be a queen," Nik answers and she doesn't doubt that somehow this will come true. "We will dance across Midgard together," he promises.

"And even the gods will be jealous," she says, turning to face him.

"Even the gods."

There are things we cannot say, he tells her in the dark. She nods. Like the coldness of their parents and the cruelty of their father that she is only beginning to know.

A clap of thunder makes Rebekah jump and feel shame for her blasphemy.

Nik presses the small carved knight into her hand. The one that he gave to her months ago. "Be brave, my Valkyrie," he whispers.

"You will stay with me, Nik?" she echoes their words in every moment of fright.

He always answers, "I will always stay with you. No matter what."

And she always says, "Always and forever."

Rebekah sees the other women worn down to bone by child and after child, and their men not coming home. They do not live so far from other villagers that she cannot hear the screams of childbirth. Too many women come to her mother for healing, for birth, and the taking of an unwanted child. It is a cruel world.

When she is older, Rebekah aids her mother. This is not me, she thinks, I cannot ever want this. Allfather, please take this from me, she prays, with shaking hands as she tips a potion's vial into the mouth of a labouring woman.

"To make the child come quicker," Esther assures the young mother, Hilda, who everyone said was too small to bear the child. "Let us call upon the help of the Allmother," Esther says and the women begin to chant. Hilda begins to scream.

The baby thrives, but Hilda does not. The end is unsurprising and no one seems to mourn over much besides the mother of poor Hilda who presses her grandson to her chest as though he is her only tether to the world.

This is the lot of women; this is her world, while her brothers explore and thrive in the new land. Hers is the lot of birth and death, and while she chafes at the responsibility and the narrowness, she feels its power. New life, heady and real. This is a power her brothers will never feel.

These are private things.

His breath against her ear, tickling with each word. Steady and real.

It could have lasted forever.

It almost did.

Klaus, her Niklaus, her Nik. And hers alone.

He keeps his word and they dance across the earth. Together. Even with Elijah and Kol, they dance together, waltzing before there ever was a waltz. Blood and gore and decadence falling before them like conquerors. Playing the king and consort in the shadowy underworld of monsters and criminals in every century.

"Darling girl," he says, and then in the old dǫnsk tunga, a shiver, breathing the familiar tones of their lost mother tongue. Their own private language in their own private world.

He puts her upon a pedestal and demands her allegiance only to him. He is like their father and not. Nik doesn't understand that he needn't demand. She'd follow him to the gates of Hel or Valhalla or wherever it is monsters go when they die.

He buys and steals expensive jewels so that her collection rivals that of any queen or empress. Her gowns number in the thousands, so that she has to add to her collection of attendants.

He carefully watches her dress before every masque or ball or concert, his eyes taking in every movement and line, every choice she makes – his own living portrait. He makes suggestions, presenting her with a new sapphire tiara.. "To match your eyes, my love," he says. Blood jewels, she thinks, jealous for a kill of which she's had no part.

Her attendants scatter, and it is just the two of them, as it has been for centuries now. She misses her other brothers, which she doesn't dare to admit. She longs for Nik, even when he's standing by her. She's been a vampire far longer than she was ever human, but she still crawls into his bed at the clap of thunder. She pretends to be frightened, sometimes, and he pretends to believe – if only to have him hold her and feel his chaotic power calm against her body.

Nik draws her, paints her in each new gown and jewel. Sometimes only in her jewels. Each careful line, each curve full, weighty. Like the weight of his hand against her cheek. When she looks at his work, she can feel it, his hand just then, peculiar for his absence.

He sees things as artists do. Each brushstroke and line conscious of its weight, its specificity in time. A permanence, immaterial of its subject, conscious too of the temporal world which it reflects but does not occupy.

Like him.

And even though he paints and draws her, Rebekah sees himself so much in the painted figure staring back that she could almost say that he remained within it, an unseen figure forever holding up the brushstrokes that made her features. She could almost touch the hands not there.

In the old world, when her heart still beat, she knows that such longing would be the greatest sin. But they are damned already. His lips skate across her cheek, too innocently to be anything but wicked. They've never done more than this, but the gossamer threads of feeling steel between them.

Their consummation comes in other ways, teeth sinking into dying flesh, their hands pressed together over a slowing heart, feeling the power of life and death roll like thunder between them. Once, Rebekah thought only she would feel this power, alone of all her brothers. She sucks Nik's bloodied finger into her mouth and thinks that for all her regret for her humanity, she cannot wish this away.

Their jagged edges fit like puzzle pieces together. This she needs forever. Always and forever.

Nothing can compare to this.

Not the fleeting tenderness she feels for mortals. Not the carnal passion for Marcel, who she wants – O Odin above – she wants. Even that is fleeting. A hundred years and no more. What is a hundred years compared to an eternity?

What is passion really?

Passion is the hunt and the blood-soaking fangs, fleeting hands and dances through the centuries. Passion is obsession. It is his need for her. The hundreds of paintings through the hundreds of years. All the court costumes and she is his queen.

Klaus and Rebekah.

Their names roll together like lovers though time. Lancelot and Guinevere. Tristan and Isolde. Hades and Persephone.

Tatia and Katherine. A dozen others, forgotten names.

Alexander. Marcel. Stefan. None of that matters. Even when she hates him and chafes at his restrictions, she loves him. All her loves fall before him, until he is the only love left standing. The only love that will ever matter. All that aching blood of Alexander is like a baptism in the new strange Christian faith. It washes her in damnation.

She does the same. Spreading scarlet blood over the bed that they've chastely shared too many times. Where they've shared writhing kills together. A smear across his pillow. When these nameless, disposable witches/vampires/werewolves get too close, she kills and waits for Nik to find their bodies. If only to see the glee lighting his features. If she is his obsession, he is hers.

To have him cradle her face in his bloody hands, "Naughty girl."

She gets creative and kills in more and more desperate ways to earn that proud sadistic smile and watch it mirror her own. If Niklaus is becoming a problem, as Elijah once said, then she is his accomplice. Willingly and with glee.

Elijah can't understand what keeps her by Nik's side when everyone else flees. But he doesn't feel the thrumming, live wire that connects her dead heart to Nik's. That makes her lash out and cling to him. That makes him need her when he doesn't need anyone.

Nik will kill again and again to keep her by his side. Until she loves him again and him only.

She leaves, but she always comes back.

She never stops loving him.

These are the private things she does not say.

Even to herself.

The first time she hears the name Caroline fall from his lips carefully neutral, she does not think anything of it. After all, there have been dozens of Carolines through the centuries and when they serve their purposes, they are dispatched, sometimes dead (sometimes by her hand), more often than not compelled to forget, to be forgotten until some future need makes them useful again. And Nik returns to her, as if his world has always been her and her alone.