A/N: So here we are, after the last part's rather unkind cliffhanger. Much love to you all for only using shouty capitals against me rather than tracking my IP address and showing up on my doorstep with sharp implements in hand.

So. We have come to the NOLA flashback depicting the very beginning of Marcel and Klaus' relationship. I actually had a lot of issues researching this section, because it was hard for me to find information specifically regarding NOLA in the 20th century, so I just sort of worked around that by looking up information on the early 20th century in America in general, as well as some basic history on New Orleans. The main historical event I wanted to work around, i.e. the turf wars between the Provenzano and Matranga families, was also very difficult to find information on. I can find several different sources stating that many historians believe organized crime in America actually started in New Orleans rather than the more commonly portrayed New York or Chicago, but they all say pretty much the same thing, which is merely that the two families butted heads over the Provenzano's monopoly on South American fruit shipments, with the Matrangas trying to horn in on their territory, and that eventually war erupted in the streets. They called a brief cease fire in 1890 to murder a police superintendent who kept sticking his nose in where they felt it didn't belong, and in turn the citizens of New Orleans gathered a lynch mob and killed eleven out of nineteen defendants who had been brought up on charges in possible connection with the superintendent's death. I know things were still ongoing during the time period I have chosen to portray because the head of one of the families (I can't recall exactly who at this moment, and it's not important right now) was dethroned sometime in the 1920s when he was gunned down by opposing mobsters, but I don't have many specific details. I will continue to pursue this, because the NOLA flashback will actually be split up over the course of three fics (including this one); I decided while writing this first section that I had too much time to cover and developments to unravel to compress it into even two parts. This first part is basically an introduction to this turbulent time period; the rest will go on to depict the relationship between Kol and Klaus (and the events leading up to his daggering), Klaus' twisted tutoring of Marcel, and the beginning of the tensions between vampires/witches and some of the original uprisings that preceded the current day rebellion.

I really only have two notes in relation to terminology, which is that 'The Black Hand' was a letter with a black palm printed onto it which was used to extort money from the people who received it. (Actually, technically 'Black Hand' was the name of the assassin, but it's in reference to the letter.)It was understood that if they didn't pay up or if they went to the police, they'd be killed. (And sometimes stuffed in barrels and left on street corners or in alleyways. Nice, huh?) Also, the 'Commercial Hotel', which I have made their regular haunt in this fic, is still alive and thriving in New Orleans; it's now known as the Hotel Monteleone. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, the 'nipple' on a musket is the little piece of metal where the cap is fitted. The hammer strikes the cap, which causes the explosion that ignites the powder and fires the ball. Just in case that sounded really weird to anyone not familiar with black powder weapons. I have an 1861 Springfield I use for Civil War reenacting, and that particular term elicits some interesting looks when talking about it to people who have never fired a black powder weapon before. Haha

And I'm going to point out now that there is a bit of dude on dude in the flashback section. It's not particularly lengthy or graphic, but it is there, so a heads-up if that's not your thing. The flashbacks will not revolve around Klaus' sexual experiences, but they will be mentioned and sometimes briefly depicted, and the guy gives me 'yeah, mate, I like ladies but I know my way around a dick' vibes like you wouldn't believe. In a thousand years, he's never dipped his paddle in the other side of the river? Pshaw. Don't piss on my head and tell me it's raining.


He hits the staircase.

Down he slides, up again he goes, jostled about by this great unseen hand that spins him first right, now left, in this vast hurricane exhalation that careens him off walls, into the formless phantoms that stumble about in gun smoke and blood mist, one shoulder at an angle, his right pinky powdered, his mouth streaming, his nose flattened-

"Nik!" she screams again, and then she too is lifted, flung off into the chaos, and back he is swept, off these feet he has only just gained he is torn-

He is pinned against the back wall by these spectral fingers, slammed with a popping of his ribs and a crackling of his joints through paper, into plaster, and now through the front window he watches half a dozen of Sophie's coven spread out across the lawn, hands lifted before them, coats flapping about them, hair in banners, in ribbons, in little ruffled spikes-

This great unseen hand shifts, and it delves down inside him, and it wrenches until he screams.


She huddles shaking beneath the window sill as the wolves pour themselves back through the doorway, dragging their dead, shouldering their wounded, bayonet across her knees, entrails draped over her foot, all of her smeared, punctured, leaking.

Maybe there comes this moment for any soldier in any war, surrounded by all the little pieces of people he used to know, his legs sunk to the shin in this awful wartime broth of black mud, blacker blood, blackest shit.

Maybe she is just a coward.

But she huddles here, and she drops her bayonet and she hugs her knees, and she is just so frozen, watching him scream.

He twists until he cracks his own spine and he screams until he dribbles all the blood his lips have left to give down his chin, but he can't escape, he can't break loose, charge them with his usual frothing bull fury, rain down destruction, pull the earth up beneath him, tip over buildings as a child upsets dominoes, and how can he be this helpless- what is she supposed to do when they have him of all people, peeled open like it is nothing-

He gets this brief reprieve.

Just half a second, but for creatures like them, for whom time holds no meaning, for whom a decade is merely a blink, a century only a nap, it is long enough for him to open his eyes, to meet her own, to slur her name, to tell her to run.

Yes, go, up the stairs, through his studio, all the way to the back where she may cower in clammy terror, where she may wait this all out in terrible mausoleum silence, hand over her mouth, fist to her throat, to be rescued by soft yellow morning.

Run, her animal instincts urge and her self-preservation reiterates.

Run, his eyes beg and his lips dribble.

A chance offered must be taken, an escape presented cannot be squandered, how can an avenue out be given the blind eye, why would you just turn that aside, throw it away-

But a soldier does not make his way home through soft yellow mornings.

He does not cringe in his terrible mausoleum silence until his comrades unearth him among sandbags and shoulder joints and carry him home to his mother.

He will never pull himself up out of this awful wartime broth with his knees hugged to his chest and his hand over his mouth.

And so she reaches her hand blindly down for the bayonet she has dropped, and she carefully gathers her legs up underneath her as he twists again, screams again, breaks and bleeds and sags.

She shuts her eyes.

Just for a moment.

Just until her breathing levels out and her hands steady just a little and the storm in her stomach settles to calm glass waters.

And then she spins with this bayonet in her hand and she hurls it in one lightning-bright bolt across the lawn, into the throat of the bitch nearest the front.

Her throat jets.

Her head sinks back with a soft fountain bubbling, sways for a moment, peels free of her neck.

She is already moving.

A loaded gun, an abandoned knife, a shattered fragment of table leg, give her anything, she needs another shot-

She is jerked forward, launched with a crack into the ward still stretched unyielding across the window, blinded by white stars, dropped into black nothing.


He smiles with his head still lolling on his chest.

"You'll have to let me down eventually," he calls hoarsely out to them, and he looks up from underneath eyebrows tinged red, and he smiles even deeper. "I think you're going to regret that."


She sinks to her knees with Jane-Ann in her arms, her heart suspended, her throat blocked off.

Rip the wrist, tip back her head, fucking drown her in the shit if you have to, just do something goddammit- do not let it end like this, not by her own family's hand, not now when this war has only just kicked off, not when they were going to come through it together-

"Jane-Ann," she says.

"Jane-Ann."

"You're fine; you are fine. It's going to be ok." She's sorry. She's sorry she's sorry she's sorry she will never not be so fucking sorry for the rest of her eternal life, and just think of the Christmas presents a fuck-up like this warrants, Jane-Ann, come on-

"Please. Oh, Jesus Christ-"

You are not allowed, you told her once when sloshing with bourbon she put her head in her hands and she breathed, "I don't want to die; Jesus, Jane-Ann, not like this, not at twenty-four, not never out from underneath his yoke."

You are not allowed, you told her, and you put your arm around her shoulders and you helped her off to bed, and when next her faith wavered you did this all over again, half-carried her up those liquid fucking stairs with their treads always just a little farther off the next time she lifted her foot, and you laid her down in that bed, and then you curled up right beside her and for one night she was again eight and innocent and sheltered so warmly by her big sister's arms.

And so you are not allowed either, Jane-Ann, not when she needs you, ok -remember how scared she is, beneath all her layers of bitch- remember that though she shucks your concern and she walks on alone what propels her forward and what keeps her going is this intrinsic knowing that you will always be there, that you will never not have her back.

Eyes open, shithead.

Boys to annihilate, clothes to exchange, secrets to swap, right, right godfuckingdamn you-

Jane-Ann.

Jane-Ann.

"Could you say something?" Sophie demands. "Please?"

She opens her mouth.

She blinks, she shudders, she dies.


He sees Caroline twitch and one of the witches falter.


She sits before the large front window with the Mikaelson manor laid out before her and the dark pitch street below her, and she sees nothing.


Oh God has anything ever hurt this much before-

She is submerged for only a moment, and then through one layer after another she drifts, fights, emerges, comes to on a slick red floor with one hand bent awkwardly beneath her, back smoldering, cheek stinging, scalp trickling.

She rocks herself once, twice -put your back into it, Forbes- and then with a final convulsive strain of everything she is, she flops over onto her back, and she looks up into his eyes.

All of him stained, splattered, pieces of him poking out or jutting in, he hangs against this wall with his filthy shirt torn and his crusted hair wild, and a blink of his eyes and a tip of his chin and he is suddenly the most feral thing she has ever seen: demonic smile, animal eyes, don't they understand what he is going to do to them when this power that like all other supremacy can never outlast an eternity fails them at last?

They send another jolt through him.

He jerks up, he arches forward, he begins to laugh.

She watches his mouth drip and his eyes spark and she stretches out with the tip of her foot, lengthening all the muscles in her leg until like her back they too smolder, sputter, catch fire all together, and with a shaky little breath and a brief squeeze of her eyes, she hooks the trigger guard of one of the pistols discarded nearby, and she kicks it up toward her hand.

She flops gracelessly back onto her stomach, her joints clicking, her exhalations spraying, her inhalations bubbling.

She grips the windowsill and hauls herself up against the ward, head lolling, eyes blurring.

Somehow the pistol comes up and with her numb deadwood left hand she steadies her shaking right wrist, and she fires until the chambers click and the barrel stops bucking and the shards in her back widen the hole in her lungs, and now as this ward she leans herself weakly against flickers and gives way with soft plastic pliability, she slumps forward over the sill, onto the lawn.


He drops, he surges forward, he is out the window in a flash.


Yes, scream, let your terror be known, your pain heard, tip back your head and give to this moon the mythical howlings of the beast- beg him a little as you claw away at his hand and you reach up for his throat- the fire in those who breathe yet but are already dead-

He strews them in wet little pieces across the grass, blurs to cut off the final two as the plucky little sweethearts turn to make a run for it, smiles so brightly as they stare up at him from swaying rubber knees and wide doe eyes.

He slides his arms intimately round their waists, holds them both against his sides.

He turns his head first to the one on his right, slips his nose up her neck, presses his mouth right to her ear, his fangs at her lobe, his fingers denting her hip. "Go back to your little friends, and tell them what happened here."

And for the pretty little thing on his left: "Tell them about what I've done to you, with all this power at your disposal- tell them how you couldn't stop me, even then."

He smiles.

He breathes in her fear and he shuts his eyes, and he crowds himself right up against her, this hand round her waist nearly a caress now, his smile deepening. "Tell them I'm coming for them."


She wakes up with his hand in her back, and she sits up with a scream.

Oh God oh God oh God it hurts- she can feel every little twist of his fingers, each scrape of the nail, the torque of wrist, the grating of bone, wood, organ, all of her nerve endings alive, on fire, everything white, black, this entire spinning room a carousel of nightclub strobe, firework constellation-

"Stop! Stop it, please!" she sobs, scratching at the arm he has looped around her front just below her breasts, propping her upright. "Stop-"

"Shh." He presses his cheeks to hers. "You're all right, sweetheart," he murmurs, and now she feels his hand slip itself free and she hears against the floor all the solid little thunk thunk thunks of the shrapnel he has dug out of her back, and with another heave of her diaphragm and a clench of her raw, raw throat, she slumps back against him.

He unwinds his arm from her waist to lift his hand to her hair as she leans her head back against his shoulder, blinking the tears from her eyes.

"Bekah?" he calls out, setting his cheek against hers once more, his fingers sifting her tangled red curls tenderly, his breath warm against her lips.

"I'm fine, Nik," Rebekah says wearily from the other side of the room, just an indistinct shape in the still-clearing smoke.

"Is it over?" Caroline asks him hoarsely.

He pulls back with his hand still in her hair, and he gives her that little you-are-everything smile, and deep down inside of her this knot that has tied itself around her heart frays and flaps loose and unravels completely.

She smiles helplessly back.

"It's done, Caroline. You were fantastic," he says so proudly.

"And what about me, Nik?" Rebekah demands, before them in a moment with hip cocked and arms across her chest. "No praise for your baby sister's matchless sharpshooting skills?"

He cups the left side of Caroline's jaw in his hand, kisses the corner of her mouth, and God how euphoric this is, how proudly his eyes still flash and his lips still curl as he looks up with one eyebrow lifted to meet Rebekah's lofty gaze.

"You were without equal, sister," he replies playfully.

"Mark this day down in your calendar, Caroline. You'll never hear him so appreciative of anyone who isn't himself ever again," she says, but there is a smile on her face as she looks down at them both, and maybe it's just this camaraderie of the warrior that Klaus has occasionally spoken of, but she looks up from his arms and she returns this little smile with one of her own.


"Ow! Would you watch it?"

"If you'd keep still, this might be a touch less painful, and certainly a bit quicker."

"Ow! Ok, seriously, that one was payback for the whole Silas imaginary white oak stake thing."

"You took a pair of bloody pliers to my ribs. This isn't anywhere in the general realm of that particular incident, Caroline."

"I thought you got them all earlier?"

"I fetched the ones that were making a beeline for your heart, love. You've still got a back full of shrapnel."

"Well, could you at least maybe try not to take half of my freaking back with them?"

"Your spine's still intact, isn't it? He's being positively gentle. Now if you don't mind, don't you have a mute button or something? Your shrillness is wearing."

"Oh, I'm sorry- am I interfering with your digestion? Random Tourist Number Three isn't sitting well? Pardon me for contributing to any discomfort you might be experiencing at the moment. I can't imagine what you must be going through- those heels do look like they pinch a lot. And your dress is obviously just so horribly tailored that it has to be causing some problems with, you know, riding and whatnot. I guess that explains a lot- are your panties equally ill-sized?"

Nik looks up from her back with that irritating little isn't-she-fantastic smile. "She gets a bit feisty when she's in a mood."

"'Feisty'? Is that really the word we're going with?"

Look at him bloody fawn over the stupid little infant.

He plucks free the last of this slick red shrapnel, drops her shirt, tentatively kisses her shoulder, and do you want to know the bloody stupidest thing of all?

She wants him to be happy.

For a thousand years he has not loved her enough, always has he chosen his power, his plots, his stupid bloody hybrids, this family he created because she wouldn't do on her own, and she looks down with her haughty pressed lips and her small stinging heart so worn to the quick, and she wants this girl to love him back, to see beyond Klaus, to understand Nik, to never again let him experience Mother's indifference and Father's disgust.

What a bloody idiot girl she is, after all these years.


He listens to the sound of this settling that comes after man has lain himself down before the cannon with cheek to the mud, musket cocked, cap put trembling to the nipple, October in a bright Halloween rainfall above him, December in a stinging flour down the boot, round the throat, in numb black death upon the fingers.

He knows it well.

Unnatural stillness, the murmuring of death, this condition which like so much else in life is never quite grasped by the feeble human mind- silence, no, the Reaper makes his arrival on sure feet, he is heralded by an orchestra, woodwind gasps, bass moans, the grief of the strings with their steel guts in a fingernail keening- never is this battlefield calm truly a silence, for one who understands how to look, to listen, to absorb.

He turns from the front window as the girls make their way back down the stairs, freshly washed, taking their shots as usual, Rebekah with a jab, Caroline a rejoinder, their footsteps thunderous upon the tread.

He cocks his head. "Bekah, is that your soap she's got on?"

"The French milled L'Artisan Vanilia? Yes. She was foul, Nik. And that nasty hippie rubbish you have the gall to call shower gel is disgusting. What the hell is 'patchouli' anyway, Nik? It smells like dirt."

He smiles. "And did you scrub her off as well?"

"Please. If I was going to have some kinky lesbian shower experience, she is the last person I would erotically soap myself up for."

"You could only be so lucky," Rebekah snips.

"You could only be so lucky," Caroline snaps back. "I have it on the authority of 7th grade Elena, who I practiced all my kissing on, that I am completely amazing at it."

"Well, one can hardly dispute that, now can they?"

"Please, Nik. You know I have a delicate constitution."

"Yes, Bekah- I've noticed that."

"Don't mock. You know I hate it when I'm slighted. I might regret saving your little girlfriend's life and make amends by eating her."

"His 'little girlfriend' handled her ass just fine, thank you very much. Who punched that one jerk in the head while he was trying to stab your eye? And booted the other one across-"

"Why is it still talking?" Rebekah asks him, crossing her arms.

"Excuse me?"

"Ladies." He folds his hands in front of him. "Can I trust the two of you to act like mature, immortal adults and be left to your own devices for a bit without my having to clean up a mess when I get home?"

"Where are you going?" Caroline demands, flicking wet hair from her eyes. "You don't know what's still lurking out there."

"I think whatever may still be lurking has been sufficiently cowed by that little display on the lawn. Not a peep from the witches in over an hour now- they've clearly exhausted their resources for the night."

"You think," she says, stepping down off the bottom stair and onto the stained carpet. "You don't know that for sure. Maybe you shouldn't just go charging off into the night without back-up."

He smiles and he takes a step forward, his hands unlacing. "I think it's time Marcel and I had a bit of a chat."

Rebekah descends the final few steps like a queen, chin high, hand trailing. "You don't honestly believe you're leaving me behind to clean all this up, do you?"

"We'll leave the worst of it for the moment. The staff will take care of it in the morning."

"I hope you're paying them ridiculously well."

"The older ones are compelled. The little redhead takes her compensation in Nik's bedroom." Rebekah smiles down at him as Caroline's head snaps round, hair whipping, eyes flaring.

"What?"

"She's joking," he says with a dark look to his sister.

"It's what she'd prefer, anyway."

"Really," Caroline says flatly.

"Unfortunately for her, my tastes run in only one direction."

"'Desperate', 'lonely' and 'without standards', judging by your latest conquest," Rebekah butts in.

He snaps his eyes up over Caroline's head to where his sister hovers imperiously on the stairs, still with that bloody Cheshire smile on her face, head tilted. "You're free to make yourself scarce at any moment, Bekah," he hisses.

"I'm not your servant, Nik. You can't dismiss me."

"I could let a decade in a box dull your tongue a bit."

"And then who would you leave behind to watch precious little Caroline while you gallivant off into the snake pit? Give my love to Marcel, by the way." She smiles. "I'm sure he'll remember what that's like."

His face relaxes just a touch at that. "I'm sure he's still much acquainted with that particular sting, Bekah."

"Wait- you had a thing with Marcel?"

"A rather torrid affair back in 1915, shortly before we left for Europe, yes," he answers, stepping up in front of Caroline to touch a finger to one shower-ironed curl. "Rebekah was having a bit of fun, Marcel was enamored. Their split wasn't so much a parting of ways as Bekah smearing him about in pieces beneath her heel." He tucks it behind her ear, lets his finger trail timidly along her cheekbone, this allowance of free touch, casual affection she has granted him still so novel, unknown, a fumbling about in the dark for one whose touch lands always as a hammer and never a caress, whose fingers understand how to make a cripple of an athlete, but to explore as a treasure soft cheek, softer lips- now there's a mystery for the ages.

She looks up at him. "So what are you going to do?"

"I think it's about time Marcel and I stopped butting heads and put an end to this little uprising, before it gets anymore out of hand. I'm sure he'll see reason after tonight."

"You mean after you storm the castle, break his throne, impale all his minions with his crown."

He smiles and again he touches her hair, her cheek, her chin. "Nothing so dramatic as that, love."


"Ok, are we really going to just leave everything like this?"

"You're free to get down on your hands and knees and scrub it all up yourself, if it bothers you so much, Caroline. I don't mop floors. Except with those who have displeased me. A line which you are skirting dangerously at the moment, by the way."

She rolls her eyes, tosses her curls, taps her foot. How could she have ever for a freaking moment even entertained the notion that Klaus was the most unbearable of all the Mikaelsons?

"Besides, you heard Nik. The staff will be back in the morning. They'll handle it then. It's a chance for humans to actually be useful for once; don't take that way from them."

"Ok, elitist snob bullshit aside, do you really want to sit around smelling this all night?"

"It's not the worst thing I've ever lived with. Besides, do you think I know where Nik keeps the bloody furniture polish?"

"Well, we could at least wipe some of it up or something. Pick up anything that's completely beyond repair. I know everything in here is probably a gajillion-year-old antique, but most of it isn't garage sale bargain bin junk at this point."

"Nik's going to be pissed," Rebekah says, indicating with a nod of her head the fragment of picture frame Caroline holds up in one hand, a little yellow-smeared corner of canvas still clinging to its edge. "That's a Monet. Not one he stole from a museum, either, I don't think. Hold it up a little more? It looks like the San Giorgio Maggiore at Twilight; he purchased that one directly off Monet."

"So they knew each other?"

"Monet was a vampire, actually. About 300 years old when Nik first met him, in 1910. I was never acquainted with him; Nik and I were still a bit at odds at the turn of the 20th century. But he told me later that he and Monet ran around Amsterdam together for a bit, until he hurt Nik's feelings or refused to fall into step or whatever it was he did that prompted one of Nik's usual tantrums, and he had his head ripped off. Then Nik came back here, where the family was living at the time. He did that, occasionally- popped out of the city to participate in a war here, an uprising there. But he was here in New Orleans for nearly fifteen years straight. He liked it here, I remember. It's a sort of cultural melting pot, some of his favorite cities combined into one single den of iniquity." Rebekah pauses for a moment, crosses both arms over her chest, stands tapping one foot as she scrutinizes with pursed lips the mess before them. "You weren't completely worthless tonight."

She cocks her eyebrow, sorts the warped frame into a pile she has begun to accumulate to her left. "Did you just say something that wasn't 'I can't believe my brother deigned to touch one dirty peasant ho hair on your head'?"

"Savor it while you can, Caroline."

They sort, kick aside, work from corner to corner in silence, the street beyond so eerily still in this stagnant midnight nothing, these late black hours which tiptoe past on silent predator toes.

"Thanks," she says finally, not looking up from the picture she has unearthed from the wreckage, a black and white of Stefan and Klaus in evening wear, Stefan's arm around his shoulder, such a freaking smile on Klaus' face, his hair slicked, his eyes radiant, and carefully she smoothes down one bent corner and she tucks it safely away in the pocket of the jacket she has once more donned. "For not letting me die. I mean, it's not like you didn't have opportunities."

Rebekah hesitates briefly, darts a look at her, shakes the glossy blonde hair from her eyes. "I'm sure I'll regret it."

"You probably will. Just like I have regretted my friends' complete incompetence where murdering original hybrids is concerned a gajillion times since I've met him. But I'm still glad for both."

"Nik often brings out one's murderous side whenever he opens his mouth."

"Don't you ever wish just a little that those daggers worked on him? I mean, if you could just stick him in a box, just for a little while, that would be kind of nice. He could use a time-out every so often."

She gets another brief flicker of a look, a little smile, a slight softening of the forehead. "Once…back in the 1400s, during the War of the Roses, Kol and I got sick of his bullying and wanted to take him down a notch. Nik was in command of one of the Lancaster regiments, and the night before he was to lead them off into battle, we took some of his oils and painted him up like one of the street tarts. We had to be so careful not to wake him. Kol was…my brother had this way of making an absolute ass of himself that was just so difficult not to laugh at, and he sat there with me all night, pulling faces, imitating Nik, lining his eyes crookedly, patting on the bloody 'blusher' until he looked like a clown. Nik was so mad; he had to wait for it all to wear off." She looks down at her hands, this little smile hovering so tremulously on her lips, and how like her brother she looks when he is not posturing, everything soft, lit up, approachable. "It was a stupid human prank. It was…nice."

"I'm sorry about him," she says quietly. "Kol."

"Well, you didn't have anything to do with that, did you? Your friends left you out of that like they did everything else." She blinks very suddenly. "It's not like I don't know what that's like."

Three minutes from now, they will retreat to their safe havens, to these cramped little interactions of extended claws, bared teeth, but for right now- for right now she tentatively smiles, and she lets herself be warmed by the even more tentative smile she receives in return, and she goes back to her cleaning.

"Oh my God- did we just have a moment?"

"I don't know; but whatever it was, let's never do it again."

"Agreed. Although imagine the convulsions Klaus would go into if he came back to find us, like, hugging it out."

"That would almost be worth the century and countless murders it would take to bleach from my mind the scarring memory of embracing you rather than snapping your neck."

"Funny- that's about as long as it would take me to-" She is interrupted by the sudden ringing of the cell phone she has slipped into the pocket of her clean new jeans.

"Probably my brother, separated from the sound of your voice for too long."

She slips it out and flicks a glance to the display screen. "Stefan, actually," she replies, and taps the screen to answer.

His voice is so warm. "I tried you earlier, but you weren't picking up. It is now…12:23 and technically no longer your birthday, but I wanted to wish you a happy nineteenth in person anyway. Well, sort of."

God, this man.

How could Elena for one single insignificant second turn her eyes from him to Damon; how could she just walk away from this man who will never not love her enough, who will always give her a choice, who will never hold her pinned beneath him while he takes what he feels he is owed.

"Thank you, Stefan," she says just as warmly, and she leans back against the wall behind her, smiling until it does not hurt anymore.

"How's college?"

"It is perfect, Stefan. Exactly what I needed after everything, you know? Just to get away, make some new friends, get drunk, make bad boy choices." Ok, the last one is so totally not a lie, so she will not feel guilty, feeding him this total line in her brightest chin-up-we-can-do-this voice, and anyway, New Orleans has been an educational experience all its own even if it's less oh-God-I-over-slept-Professor-Maxwell-is-going-to-kill-me and more oh-God-Klaus-has-eight-jillion-enemies-and-they-all-know-about-his-little-teeny-marshmallow-center-for-this-fabulous-blonde-baby-vamp.

"I am not touching that. The help can deal with it."

She snaps her head around, makes frantic shushing motions at Rebekah, is rewarded by the same kind of oh-God-how-evil-am-I-isn't-it-just-freaking-lovely shit-eating smile her brother has absolutely perfected, and just see if you don't pay for that later, Original Bitch.

"…Is that Rebekah in the background?"

"No! The university has this really active exchange program, so we've got foreign exchange students just crawling all over the place, and my roomie is from England. They do kind of sound alike, though, huh? Like I need anything to remind me of her." She smiles into the phone, glares across the room. "I mean, if I never saw her again for my entire way too long life, that would just be way too soon, you know?"

"So you're at college. Right now. In your dorm room."

"Dorm room. Fabulous mansion tarnished by all the ghosts of her sexual exploits past. Similar enough, I suppose. Both have well-used beds."

She covers the phone. "Shut. Up."

"Oh, Caroline, calm down. As your freshly imported roommate, I'm just not yet accustomed to your American mannerisms. You might have noticed my older brother can be perceived as being a bit rude as well. Almost as though he was raised by wolves." She smiles. "He does seem to have a few things in common with them, doesn't he? Sometimes I wonder that he doesn't just turn into one, like some kind of man/wolf hybrid."

"Sweetie, didn't you have a class? That you're failing? Because Basic Math 101 is just so far over your head that you just can't make any sense of it? Oh well. Fifth time's a charm, right?"

"Right- isn't that the one with Professor What'shisnameagain- blue eyes, dimples? He seems to be quite taken with you. He's a bit old for you, though."

She can hear Stefan trying not to laugh on the other end.

"Caroline. I know you're not at school."

"Ok, I'm sorry- it is Rebekah in the background, but everything's fine. She's just here to drop off something from Klaus. I was there for a little while, but I headed back to school months ago."

"Uh huh. So, Klaus has created this whole alternate universe in his head where you stayed on in New Orleans with him because some vampire named Marcel won't let you leave because you're his best leverage against Klaus?"

"What?"

"Yeah, Caroline, he keeps in touch on a regular basis to make sure your mom is still ok. Granted, he goes about it in the rudest way possible; he opens with something about mine and Damon's general incompetence, throws in a couple of threats, then tells me to have a nice day in that voice he does. You know the one I'm talking about- it's sort of gentlemanly, and yet it has that underlying hint of I-will-murder-you-and-everyone-you've-ever-loved-unless-you-kiss-my-superior-hybrid-feet."

"Ok, so why did you just make me go through all that?"

"Because if you're lying to me it means that things are bad. And that maybe I need to worry."

"Which is exactly why I didn't say anything, because Stefan, I promise you do not have to worry about me, ok? Just keep my mom safe for me. I'm under the very creepily overprotective watch of the most powerful guy on the planet- I'll be fine. But my mom is not, and I need her to be there for me when it's time for me to come home, ok, Stefan?"

There is a long pause on the other end, and for a moment she just listens to him breathing, to the drumming of his heart and the whisper of his blinks, to the tick tick clicking of the clock somewhere within his house.

"Liz will be fine, Caroline. I promise," he says, and she shuts her eyes and she breathes out so hard, and when with a final good-bye he severs this connection to the last of her friends, she opens them once more to find Rebekah looking at her from across the room.


Ah, the sound of blood in the evening.

Drip drip drip drip drip.

Isn't it lovely, he thinks, and he swings the heads as he goes, smiling all the way.


Marcel, Marcel, Marcel.

Why the face, mate? Have you not seen this grand savior of your kingdom step from street shadow to hotel entryway, this most contrite of peace offerings in hand?

The enemy of my enemy and all that, isn't that right, Marcellano, son of Frederick.

He smiles up at the balcony over which Marcel stares, his hands tight upon the railing, his shoulders hunched about the ears.

Such tension, lad.

What's say we ease the burden a bit, hmm?

He walks forward.

He is met at the doors.

"May I come in?"

"Since when do you ask, Klaus?"

"It's rude to invite oneself into a man's home- that's his sanctuary after all, isn't it? And in the interest of peace, I've even brought a housewarming gift," he says, and he hefts the heads of these witches who dared stand against him and he drops them each with a wet little splat at the man's feet. "I apologize- there's more where these came from, but tragically, I ran out of hands."

With dead eyes and shaking hands, Marcel toes these little gifts with an immaculate boot and looks up so brokenly, poor lad. "They killed some of my best men today. Some of my friends."

"I know," he soothes, taking a step closer.

Such a load is caring, isn't it, mate?

"Perhaps we could do something about that together," he offers with his hand clapped compassionately round the boy's shoulder. "It's about time we stopped all this butting of the heads and put them together, don't you think?"

Weren't they once quite the team- didn't they once upon a time turn this entire city upon its bloody head- did he not take this boy in hand and show him real power, this thing which his ancestors for so long went without?


New Orleans, 1907

That great bonging of the clock- what a little thing to admire amongst all this polished luxury.

But these fabulous mechanical counters of time, this thing that may be caged but never truly snared tick on, and still he eludes you yet, father.

He crosses the lobby of the Commercial Hotel with a smile, hand tucked away in his waistcoat, his heels clicking upon this vast wax-shined mirror of a floor.

The porter gives a little twitch of his shoulders, smoothes his vest, straightens his cuffs, steps forward with his most helpful smile. "Your brother's here today, Mr. Mikaelson. In the lounge."

He stops.

He turns round with hand still in his waistcoat, smile just as pleasant. "Please. Call me Klaus. And yes; I'm here to meet him, actually. But, I suppose you think your attentiveness deserves a little something, now don't you?"

What a treat, how quickly the boy's eyes snap wide.

"I wasn't- I wasn't fishing or anything, sir, I just thought- perhaps- that maybe you would like to know-"

"No no no no- Tim, was it? Let's not be like that. Professionalism deserves a good turn, now doesn't it?"

The boy remains very still, hardly breathing, his eyes never narrowing.

How far his reputation precedes him- just watch how the twitchy little thing flinches as he reaches out with his hand and he pats him playfully on the cheek, his smile going even deeper.

He slips from his wallet five crisp new bills, and he tucks them away in the boy's front trouser pocket, lifting both his hands to the boy's shoulders as the poor little thing holds himself so carefully motionless, that little rabbit within his chest going going going.

"Take your mum out for a nice meal, Tim. I recommend the jambalaya down at the Napoleon House."

"Yes, sir," he whispers. "Thank you."

"There's a slight issue at hand, though, Timmy. May I call you that? I wouldn't want to overstep my bounds, after all."

The boy twitches his fingers, clears his throat, nods his head in three anxious little jerks of the neck.

"Excellent. Now since we're such great friends, I expect you to keep an eye out for a man. His name is Mikael. If you get wind of him in this city, Timmy, I need you to notify me immediately. Do you understand? Fantastic. It'd be most unfortunate for your poor mother if you didn't."

"What do you mean?" he whispers.

"Well, you see, mate, I'm afraid that if you fail to report to me in a timely manner that I'll need you to eat her."

"What?"

"Tim Tim Tim- there's no need for that sort of face, now is there, mate? I don't mean all of her, of course; I'm well aware the human body isn't really set up to process that sort of thing. Just a bit. Just enough to leave her permanently scarred, shall we say?" He pats his cheek again, tidies the boy's vest, tucks that little bit of crisp new green which peeks over the top of his pocket down out of sight. "Off you go, now."


"Ah, here he is- and now the party truly begins, friends," his brother says with a great flourish of his arms as he flings wide the doors and he strides into the lounge like all other establishments he steps foot within, as though this like all the world before him belongs solely to him, this most dreaded nightmare of the supernatural world.

Kol crosses the room in a flash and slings his arm round him with a smile. "Nik!" he crows, and how much warmth there is in this drunken greeting, how much pride he hears- do you see before you this man I call brother, isn't he marvelous, gents-

Do you see, Bekah, that there is a portion of this family which can acknowledge his worth, which has not let ninety-two bloody years elapse between visits?

He is just certain, sister, that that bloody toff was entirely worth this little tantrum of yours, that you'd not have made better use of your time at the side of your family who would never have fled without so much as a damn word.

The men seated round the table in the center of the room look up from their cards, wreathed in cigar smoke, alcohol fumes, their laughter dying away as those who have crossed his path before sit suddenly upright in their chairs, bending these frail little squares in hands gone to wood.

He smiles and sets his homburg upon the table.

"Jake, Nathan- good to see you again, mates. Families doing well, I trust?"

"He hasn't been here, Klaus, I swear," the little blonde on the right says hoarsely, bending his cards still more in his rigid white fingers.

"Well, isn't that fortunate? I'd hate to see anything happen to that pretty little girlfriend of yours. Disembowelment, was it? Then a quick jaunt into the sun? I certainly hope that never comes to pass; little messy."

"What a tease, right, boys?"

He holds his hands up. "Where would we be without a little anticipation in this world? The 20th century is entirely too entranced with immediate gratification, little brother."

Kol hands him a drink.

He clinks the ice in the glass with a little smile and points across the table to the man directly opposite him, his smile widening as this man gives him back such a charismatic quirking of the mouth. "Now you're a new face. And a bit out of place, here, mate. What's your name?"

Kol sits down on the edge of the table and with a press of his hands he slides himself across this smooth lemon-oiled surface to fetch up right beside the man with his charismatic little mouth, one arm going round the man's jacketed shoulders. "Nik, may I introduce you to a new friend of mine? Marcel, give my brother a nice welcome, would you? He's a little touchy about manners," he whispers right into the man's ear, giving an encouraging little pat to one of those jacketed shoulders.

Klaus gestures helplessly. "You eat one rude neighbor and suddenly you've got a reputation." He smiles.

He takes a sip.

"Marcel," he says, drawing these two syllables out, rolling them round his mouth with such leisurely menace. "Now my brother has just generously named you friend. Do you know what that means, mate?"

This fragile human called Marcel folds his hands together with another of those smiles which is almost too large for his face. "It means I better not miss a punch line."

He swirls his next drink round his mouth as he nods, his answering smile nearly as wide. "I love it when they're quick, brother."

"Anyone have a light for my brother?" Kol asks the group, rising smoothly to his feet and extending both arms out to either side, his eyes flicking round this tense little supernatural gathering with its single composed human. "I've got a surprise coming later, but I thought we'd have a round of cards for now. Nik missed last week's game, to all of our immense disappointment. Isn't that right?" He clicks his fingers at the broad-shouldered redhead sitting to the left of this Marcel, flips his hand, leaps down from the table. "Go and fetch my brother a chair. He's our guest, after all."

He seats himself uncomfortably close to the human, leaning back with one hand in his waistcoat, the other whipping round to catch the cigar Kol lobs to him from across the table.

The vampire beside him leaps.

Marcel shuffles.

He smiles.

"Winner take all?" he asks, reaching out to trace the carotid of the fidgety little thing beside him with an intimate brush of his finger, one eyebrow quirked.

"Nik- not before my surprise."

He withdraws his finger, tucks this hand away into his waistcoat as well, gives a regretful lift of his eyebrows, sinks a little deeper into his chair. "I indulge you far too much, little brother."

Kol grins.

He lights up.

"Deal," he orders.


There's a charm about this man.

Though he numbers only twenty-five trifling years he has acquired within these two decades the knowledge of how precisely to meet the gaze, to become absorbed, to never not take in.

And the stories he tells.

Sojourns into the white brothels, daring escapes, arrests dodged, brawls begun, cold nights on poorly-lit street corners, saxophone to his lips- what a time this little insect has had of it.

He's lived better of course, brought down kingdoms, sent peasants in a great sea foaming to pull from their beds sleeping royals, smeared men like ants beneath him, one-upped that terrible Vlad the Impaler with his pathetic little forest, but what a gift this man has for chatter, how pale his own experiences seem beside these breathless alleyway excursions filled with all the cold white smoke of his nervous exhalations, the thundering of the coppers just beyond.

All right, brother.

You may keep him, for now.

He hears in the street the sudden arrival of an automobile, its passengers embarking in a great flurry of rustling coats, adjusted hats, the scent of steel in a thick nickel perfume all round them.

He taps his cigar into the tray, watches its end scatter in warm cherry cinders across the tin.

Kol smiles.

He leans back, takes another drag, flourishes his cards with his free hand, tapping them in a rather catchy little rhythm upon the table.

The doors burst open.

"Right," his brother says, pushing his chair back from the table. "So, Nate. A little birdy told me you received The Black Hand and forgot to pay up, isn't that right?"

Nathan sets down his cards very slowly.

"I might have warned them that they'd need something rather special in those guns to deal with your disobedience," Kol says, and now with a great roar the men who fan out beyond the doors open fire.

Poor little Nate.

Never does make it out of his chair.

The Marcel chap throws a chair, kicks over the table, sends the cards in a thick snowfall through the air.

He remains calmly seated as the room erupts, fangs dropping, men screaming, the walls chipped to powder, the chairs to kindling, each ricochet magnified to cannon thunder.

Kol has divested himself of his jacket.

"Come on, Nik. They can't have all the fun."

He cracks his neck.

Kol wrenches from the overturned table one of its battered legs.

What abandon there is in a fight.

The cracking of bone, the tearing of sinew, everything of import to a man abandoned with his dignity: his morals, his principles, his wills, his will nots, stack them there, round that little puddle of his discarded courage, throw them aside, watch this most ethical of all men stampede his own, smell his desperation in rings round his armpits, taste this fear in its heavy pheromone fog, and isn't this all just that much more magnificent, when you have beside you someone to share this most cherished of moments?

Nothing more intimate than man's final moments, after all.

"Listen to that," he whispers in the human's ear as he hauls one of the gunmen screaming back against him and he cracks his windpipe like a twig.

Kol smashes in his head with the leg he still hefts in his hand, and a spray of red paints itself in a watercolor splatter across Marcel's cheek, the boy scrambling back just a little now as Klaus drops the gunmen in a slump across the edge of the overturned table, his arms swaying limply.

He reaches out in a blur to seize another, buries his face, pulls it away stained, watches the boy scramble back a little more, smiles through all this red on his lips, whirls past his brother to grab a barrel, to bend it in half with a casual flick of his wrist as it goes off with a piercing boom in his hand.

A little hop kicks him off the wall, lands him in a crouch on the man who falls to this momentum, and now a dart, a taste, a savoring: isn't this one flavorful, dear brother?

Like him to save you a little, he asks, and he tosses the man one-handed across the room to Kol, who catches him just as easily, who tears into the unblemished left of his neck and feeds until the man's life flees in pungent little rivulets down his legs.

They converge in a blink, and perhaps they're showing off just a touch now, but how wicked is a little hubris, for men such as them?

He leans over just far enough for Kol to roll himself with a little whoop across his back, his leg sweeping round, this impromptu club of his following after, and what a sound it makes when it impacts: just like the hollow clopping of that childhood chore, father breathing down his neck to cut faster, more evenly, see how Elijah manages it, boy, don't let a little discomfort slow you, weakling.

Kol grabs the last of them as the man makes a break for the door.

"Now what do we say, when we get home?" he asks playfully, holding the man by both shoulders.

"The Provenzanos set us up and we walked into a massacre," the man says blankly, blinking his dumb bovine eyes.

Kol pinches his cheek. "Very good, darling. Now, make sure you really talk up the brutality- and don't be shy about pointing out your own battle wounds, all right, mate?"

"What?"

His brother shoves his fist into the man's gut, flares open his fingers, widens in this expensive dress shirt he shreds so easily a jagged hole through which he pulls wet red loops of the man's intestines.

He takes his fangs to his wrist, holds the man flailing to this seeping little wound, yanks him back after merely a sip. "That ought to tide you over. Better hurry, though. That looks rather nasty, friend." He screws his face up sympathetically.

The man stumbles away screaming.

Kol retrieves his jacket with a flourish, whips it round behind him, slips himself back through its arms.

He leaves it open over his stained white shirt and holds out his arms. "How do I look, brother?"

"Now you're just showing off," he scolds with a meticulous straightening of Kol's slightly askew bowtie.

"How was that for an initiation, Marcel?" Kol calls over his shoulder to the human still huddling cautiously behind the table, just a touch less smiley than the lad kicked off this evening. "He wants to be one of us, Nik."

"Does he now."

"Now remember our little talk about keeping secrets. You've still got so many hoops to jump through, darling. I'd hate to end this prematurely."

Klaus smiles.

Kol claps his hand to his back and together they walk out into the lobby, his brother's fingers creeping casually round his shoulder, jacket flapping as he goes.

"You didn't see us," he calls with a sly little smile to the porter cowering in the corner, knees to his chest, arms over his head, eyes squeezed so tightly shut. "Isn't that right, Timmy?"

The boy lets out a strangled sob.

The doors admit them with a thunderous bang into the moist jungle steam of this stagnant southern world.


"Our brother has been exposed to some of the most powerful magic this world has to offer, and yet he is taken in by cheap parlor tricks."

"Elijah- lighten up. Look how he enjoys it."

"What is this man's name again?"

"Haven't you heard of the great "Handcuff King", brother? He's traveled all over Europe and the United States. Slipped Scotland Yard and a Siberian prison transport van, last I heard. Popular among the vaudeville circuit."

"Vaudeville. That would explain my unfamiliarity with him."

He smiles. "Your elitism is positively overwhelming, 'Lijah. There's the shoe shine boy now; why don't you go and get yourself a nice buff, brother? Kol and I can handle our poor taste without you hovering." He smiles again.

Elijah moves off into the crowd assembled round this pliable little 'magician' writhing within his straitjacket, the rope from which he has suspended himself creaking as he struggles.

What amusing angles he must contort himself into to slip free of this frail canvas prison.

He slithers an arm loose.

There is a little ripple of applause from these intent spectators with their eager eyes and their hands poised for the victory.

Kol tips his head toward his own. "What do you think he'd do if I gave him a little kick? How much of a challenge can it be, merely hanging there, Nik? Let's see him get out of it while he's dancing all round the place."

A woman cranes her neck round to gape her stupid predator horror at him, holding her little train stiffly up out of the mud.

Kol winks at her.

He puts his arm round his little brother's shoulders, stands with his hip casually cocked and his hand carelessly dangling. "Don't ruffle her like that, Kol. Her husband's a bit touchy about that sort of thing. Isn't he now, Countess?"

"Nik- don't tell me you put her legs up round your ears? She doesn't strike me as being quite so…malleable."

He watches her shoulders stiffen. "No, no- nothing so crass as that. I merely caught her in a little ménage à trois with two of her husband's business associates in one of the rooms of her husband's latest acquisition. Quite a little find. It's come in rather handy, wouldn't you say, Countess?"

She tilts her chin so haughtily and swallows so thickly, this lovely little thing.

He drops his voice. "I heard rumors of his last wife's unfortunate demise. Quite an ugly little affair. I wonder- what do you think he would have to say about this? I've often found myself curious as to how he would react."

"I've heard nothing of this Mikael," she rasps out, gripping her train more tightly.

"And I hope you never do," he says sympathetically.

With her elbow she opens a little hole in the crowd and she hurries away with tapping heels and flaring train, breath rattling beneath the strain of all this wet southern weight.

The magician twists, bucks, wrenches his other arm loose with a little flourish of his wrist.

Gunshot praise, the piercing admiration of those too easily impressed, ladies smiling, men with hands to their wallets, Kol clapping along with obnoxious over-enthusiasm, shoulders shifting beneath his arm, the moist threat of rain in a human-scented mist all about him, the shoe shine boy with his polishing rag in a rasp along leather sanded to mirror- how intoxicating this damp little city is.

He spots a flash of gold to his left, shifts his eyes to this bright sunlight glare, and what have we here, mate?

What a nice little Breguet you hang so carelessly from your pocket. Entirely authentic, nearly new- yes, thank you, he thinks he will help himself.

He lets the man feel him slide it free of his pocket.

"You put that back now," the man hisses between his teeth, whirling round with his fists already poised.

We've a fighter on our hands, have we, mate?

He smiles and he spins the watch upon its chain and now in this man's eyes kindles a little spark of doubt, a brief hint of uncertainty; perhaps this innocuous little man with his beatific smile and his pretty eyes is not all he seems, hmm; perhaps there lurks beneath the most innocent of sheep the fiercest of wolves; perhaps your hands large as hammers are no match for his own slender as a girl's, isn't that so, father-

"Right. Well." He gestures regretfully with one arm still round Kol's shoulders. "I'm afraid I'm going to need you to come and get it, mate."

Kol leans forward with a smile. "Please."

The man spins around and stalks away.

"I even asked nicely, Nik."

"I know you did." He gives his shoulder a conciliatory pat. "Lunch?"

"I thought you'd never ask, Nik. Something blonde. I had brunette for breakfast."

"Please keep in mind that discretion is a virtue, Niklaus," Elijah says suddenly, materializing at his left shoulder. "We don't need a replication of last week."

"I thought Nik's redecoration of that brothel was rather inspired. It must be the artist in him."

"I can't take complete credit; it was, after all, inspired by that Ratcliff Highway business. It's remarkable, the influence a particularly exceptional bit of work can still exert, nearly a century later."

A sudden wail from ahead silences Elijah's retort, and now all three of them look round to watch a lady with her arms in an awkward puppet splay, held just barely aloft by a nancy young gent in a well-cut three piece, his legs buckling a bit beneath this unexpected burden.

Her companion reaches distastefully into the barrel which has caused her such distress and lifts free a mangled head, its smooth oil hair slicked back from empty red sockets.

"I thought I smelled something delicious," Klaus comments mildly.

"Wonderful. The Matrangas got my little message, I see. What a week this is going to be, brothers."


In the streets they clash, these precious little humans with their ridiculous little claims to land that in another few decades will mean nothing to limbs bent to time and eyes frosted in centurial white.

He watches a Provenzano slaughtered, a Matranga tortured, barrels delivered, handprints passed round, Kol in a cheerful little froth about the entire affair, his brother nudging, nudging, always provoking: how magnificently he's come along, this boy who once shadowed him through the woods, bow in hand.


Kol brings the human round the house for drinks, lets them both into the parlor without even a knock.

"My mistake. I didn't realize Nik had company," Kol says cheerfully, snatching the decanter from one of the tables and pouring himself a generous glass.

He lifts his face from the woman's neck, his hand still working beneath her skirts, her head thrown back upon the settee, mouth open, fingers worrying her gown to thread, all of her flushed, trembling, poised gasping upon this brink she spills over with a sharp cry and a slick seizuring of her thighs.

She drops her fangs, leans in toward his throat, and now with a casual thrust of his palm against her chin, he snaps her neck.

He drops his hand to the hair of the boy thrusting away with such dedication over his lap, strokes it gently, lets his head loll back against the settee with a smile.

"Would you like to join, mate?" he asks, his eyes flickering, his fingers flexing.

He yanks the boy's mouth from his cock.

He snaps off a corner of the sofa's frame, he tosses it teasingly in his hand, he takes the boy through the heart.

"Oops; I suppose I should have said 'replace'. His technique was atrocious."

Give the boy a bit of credit.

He does not so much as slosh the glass Kol pushes into his nearly steady hand, and there's that smile again, as he lifts this glass to his lips and he tosses it back with one supple surge of his sweet young throat. "No thanks. Not really my scene."

He zips himself back up with a smile, crosses the room in a blur, takes one of the glasses Kol has lined up before him as he presses himself still-hard to the back of this human who at last flinches just a touch.

"That's a shame," he says with his mouth to Marcel's ear, thumbing the blood from his bottom lip to his tongue.

"Nik has a few boundary issues. Don't let it bother you- if you can say one thing for him, it's that he likes a willing partner, isn't that right?"

He lets his fangs shiver faintly from carotid artery to vertebral, draws his hand up along the boy's side to his shoulder, pulls him just far enough back to press his chest to the boy's spine. "That's right."

He lets go.

He reaches the doors in half a second.

"If you change your mind," he says, and he raises his glass in a little salute.


In a thousand years he has exchanged foot for hoof for wheel, watched countries die, men put to rest, tragedies blunted by this great sandpaper of all, time with her edge flush to the heart, grinding away as she goes, but never has he not been able to rely upon this boy whose admiration never failed as father's never flourished.

Sated on blood, drink, death, this most prominent lust mother embedded so very long ago, he sleeps like a child, one arm flung across his eyes, leg dangling over the bed.

There were once two boys.

Perhaps you cannot imagine.

Of course you could never imagine- what acrobatics must the mind perform, to reconcile monster and man, to picture two brothers, two friends with their little mortal joys, swimming hole excursions, childhood pranks, midnight adventures-

Did you know-

Did you know that once this boy who kills so ecstatically took a beating meant for him, how scared he was to confess to father, here I am, it was I who damaged your sword-

"I was afraid he'd kill you, Nik," this boy said, and then he leaned his forehead against this steadiest shoulder of all, that of older sibling, big brother, eternal protector, and he dissolved into tears.

And do you know he never said a word.

He patted the boy's back and he dried the boy's eyes, but not once did he ever step foot in front of father to correct this wrong, to clear Kol's name, to take up this mantle he donned the day Mother brought forth with one last sweaty push this frail red bundle with its soft cushion of wet black hair, just padding enough for a tender chin.

He touches his hand very softly to this boy's hair that has never quite matured from down to bristle, and he sweeps it so carefully up off his unlined forehead.

"Nik?" his brother rasps sleepily. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says thickly. "Go back to sleep," he assures him, and he kicks off his shoes and he lies down on the opposite side of the bed with his hands behind his head.

Kol claps him briefly on the shoulder, rolls back over into murky black dream.

He stays awake for a very long time, just listening to this boy breathe.


"The Matrangas sent you."

"Did I say that?"

"I believe you did, little brother."

"Sorry; memory must be a touch spotty. What I meant was your boss directed me here. You must have really pissed him off, mate," Kol says cheerfully, and he takes the most prized of his Louisville Sluggers to the man's face.

His jaw skitters across the bar.

His eye drops itself with a noisy splash into his mate's glass.

What an ice settles over this pub, hands frozen mid-reach, lips paused mid-sip, every limb, hair, smile cast in stiff marble relief.

Kol leaps with a jaunty little spring onto the bar. "Ladies and gentlemen: tonight my brother and I have something special planned for you all. A little contest, you might say. And even a prize, for the winner. Unfortunately, as in the tradition of the Roman gladiators, there can only be one. You, ma'am. You look like a fighter. Join me up here?"

Klaus hauls the woman Kol indicates up by the elbow, and flings her toward the counter.

She screams as his brother's fingers close round her arm and yank her up off the floor to sprawl flailing across the bar, upsetting mugs as she goes. "Now listen closely. I want whoever has enough limbs intact by the end of this to get himself- or herself," he smiles charmingly at the woman, "out that door to tell anyone who will listen that those Provenzanos have gone and outdone themselves this time. A whole bar, my darlings- and some of them innocents." He hugs the shaking woman against him. "All right; here are the rules. No weapons. Not a single broken bottle or blade, and let's all just empty our pockets of anything noisy, shall we? Revolvers on the tables, gentleman."

Klaus bars the doors.

Marcel shifts upon his stool.

"If you're trying to faze me, it's not gonna' work."

He smiles.

His brother hurls the woman to the jackals with a cry of "Begin!"

"Good," he says, and he leans across the boy to thumb from the bar some of the blood making its way in little creeping rivers across the wood.

He swipes it across Marcel's bottom lip.

"Just to give you a little taste, mate."


The thundering of the guns, blood set to flight, splattered bowels, empty bladders, dirt churned to mud- what a battlefield these streets have become!

He clotheslines a man, snags the shotgun that leaps from his hands, fires once, lobs it sideways to Marcel, wades his way into this little wrestler's knot of family vs. family, Kol at his side, the human sprinting to cover, his jacket shot to ribbons, one of his hands smashed to splinters, but the blood, the cries, the lives snuffed out in a blink-

He takes a knife to the gut, he laughs, he breaks the man across his knee and chucks him over his shoulder to shatter against the hotel just behind him.

Kol head butts one of the combatants; he rips out the man's throat as he sways drunkenly.

He ducks Kol's outstretched left arm; Kol rolls himself round his right side, and now up pops another, and how slick everything is on the inside- ever noticed how much slip the human body has got to it, how you must struggle through all these lubricated layers of elusive liver, oily spleen, how you must twist and twist and twist-

He dumps the man's intestines in a snake wriggling on the street.

The surge has reached the boy, and now they turn round to watch Marcel fire once, strike out with the butt, thrash and kick and bite this surge that upends him with a cry, slams him down on his back, keeps him pinned for only a moment.

What potential he has.

"Didn't I tell you, Nik?" Kol asks, nodding toward their eager young student, propping one elbow on his shoulder.


"Tell me, Marcel."

He swirls the A positive in his glass.

"What made you come to my brother, not determined to destroy him, but to join him?"

The human leans back against the bar of the Commercial Hotel's newly-renovated lounge, saxophone between his knees, chin upon the mouthpiece.

"Well, I'm not as innocent as my boyish good looks would suggest."

He smiles.

He sips.

"So it's the blood. You're one of those…what? Special types of peculiar taste? Like that chap round Whitechapel, a few years ago?"

"Yeah, sure," Marcel replies easily. "Left a string of mutilated prostitutes all over Storyville. Probably rivals even your count, Klaus."

He propels himself in a flash across the barstools between them. "Wrong," he hisses. "It's the power you crave; I can practically smell it on you, mate. You want what we have. Supremacy over man. You want to be faster, stronger, better." He sets his glass down and he leans in very close. "You want, to never be held down again."

Marcel swallows very carefully.

He watches the boy's pulse tremble in his neck, leap in his wrist, hears its wartime rumble, the river rushing of these well-stocked veins, thinks for just a moment of how this boy with his fire banked so carefully and his anger set to simmer would feel against his lips, his tongue, his throat.

He leans back just a little. "There was a man, a very long time ago, who held me down too. Suffice it to say, I may be able to relate just a bit."

Has he stood against man's prejudice for merely the way he wears his skin, for so petty a thing as pigment, for something so insignificant as race, this thing that shares the same frail heart, feeble lungs, fleeting life?

No.

But he knows a thing or two about a boot to the throat, of being always just out of reach, outside, beyond, never quite up to par.

Go on and ask him, mate, when last he flashed his fangs to a friend and did not gain a foe. Inquire of his days spent in a careful creeping beneath the watch of Father, master, who never named him equal, who always ground him down.

He clicks the ice in his glass against its side.

"Play that arrangement of Ave Maria you were fiddling around with the other night."

Marcel sets his lips to the sax.

He tilts the glass to his mouth.


He upends Kol's bed with a terrific crash, his brother rag dolling from mattress to floor, rolling as he hits, his face gone from lax to livid in a blink, his feet gained in a second, Klaus' arm round his throat in the next.

Elijah appears in the doorway. "Niklaus."

"He's hidden my bloody oils again!"

"Kol, I told you not to touch his art supplies."

He can hear the little bloody shit laughing even through his wheezing. "But look at his face, Elijah! You can't tell me this isn't entertaining, brother."

"Where are they?"

"I might tell you in exchange for that blonde you left the pub with the other night."

"I already ate her, you little ass," he hisses, tightening his arm. "Here's my counter-offer, little brother: tell me where they are, or I'll dismiss the staff for the day and use your face to polish all the furniture."

"Niklaus! Release him!"

"Oh shut up, Elijah. You know he needs a good beating from time to time, to keep him in line." He releases Kol with a violent thrust, flipping him backward into the wall.

He gets up with a dislocated shoulder and lowers his head in a surge that takes Klaus off his feet and slams his head into the end table pushed against the opposite wall, and now the room kaleidoscopes around him, becomes a carousel of misplaced ceiling, improperly-installed floor, everything a blur, Kol's foot in his gut, his fist in Kol's jaw, one of his teeth skittering about across the carpet, Kol's nose gushing, his hand crumpled-

"Niklaus! Kol!" Elijah barks, and a sudden yank at his throat and he is lifted by the collar, Kol hauled away similarly, both of them twisting, straining forward, kicking out-

"Oops, Nik- do you know what- I think I actually knocked them off the windowsill while I was sorting through your things. Some of your charcoal too. I hope two stories wasn't a bit much for them." He smiles through his split lip.

"I'm going to pop your head off and start a rugby match with it," he snarls.

"What was that, Nik? I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of your whole studio being looted. I hope none of those frames were antiques."

"Enough. Kol, do not touch Niklaus' things. Niklaus, do not tear off your brother's limbs over something so insignificant."

"What would be significant enough for him to be allowed to tear off my limbs, 'Lijah? Just out of curiosity."

He ignores the question. "Both of you, go and clean up the mess you made last night in the French Quarter. Don't think I didn't hear about that little stunt with the Matrangas."

"Where are they?" Klaus roars, stretching out with the toe of his shoe just far enough to cave in Kol's kneecap with a wet crunch.

"Stop. Off to the French Quarter with both of you. Don't involve the human. He's a loose end; he needs to be cleaned up, soon."

He releases Kol first.

"Niklaus," he says warningly, cocking his head as their younger brother makes it to the door and vanishes beyond.

He jerks out of Elijah's grip.

"Don't touch him, Niklaus. I mean it."

He blurs to the door, reaches the staircase half a second later.

"Elijah! Nik just stabbed me!"

"Niklaus!"

"Technically, Elijah, I didn't lay a finger on him. The staircase banister did all the touching."

His older brother's sigh is a hurricane gust in his ears.

Kol yanks the banister from his stomach and slaps him across the face with it.

He beats Klaus to the front door with only milliseconds to spare, blurring through it into the street beyond.


"This the last of your little tests?" Marcel asks, giving a final yank of the man's arm, folding it with a loud wishbone cracking over his head so that all of him is neatly contained within this barrel Kol arranges with such great care in this foggy gray alleyway.

"That's adorable," Kol says, pinching his cheek. "Good work, darling. But, no, unfortunately to say, your initiation is not quite over."

Marcel darts a glance at him.

He shrugs.

"What can I say, mate. He's rather picky about who he turns."

"Unless there are nice breasts involved. Do you have nice breasts, Marcel?"

"'Fraid I'm fresh out, boys. I did escape the wrath of one night's angry white husband in one of her dresses, though. I didn't make a half bad lady, if I say so myself."

Kol cocks his head. "He thought you were his wife?"

"No. She wanted me to wear it while I fucked her. I was still wearing it when he burst in with his shotgun. And all the way home through Storyville. If the number of propositions I received is any indication, these hips were made for a skirt."

He dimples. "I'd have made an offer," he points out slyly.

"Yes, well, you're a harlot, Nik. It's sort of the shame of the family," Kol confesses, dropping his voice. "Put his pecker in anything, this one."

"Not at all true. I wouldn't have touched that thing you were hovering round the other night with the ten foot stick Elijah's sporting up his ass."

"You're just jealous, Niklaus. He wanted her first, Marcel, but she was so completely taken with me, she didn't have eyes for anyone else. She was a feisty little thing, too. Wanted to start off on top. She was delicious."

"She smelled."

"She did not."

"I prefer mine with a little more of an eye to their personal hygiene." He looks up at Marcel from beneath his lashes with another little smile.

"He flirt with everyone like this?"

"Just until he gets into your trousers. Then he brutally maims and/or murders you. Unless you're very, very good. How are you with your mouth, mate?"

"You'd have to ask my various assortment of lady friends."

"The tales they'd have to tell, I bet," he replies, dimpling again, and with an eager little clap, Kol suddenly leans forward, listening.

"Here we are! Our first customers of the night. I wonder how they'll like the show?"


"You know," he says silkily one night as they are lolling half-drunken about the Commercial Hotel's lounge, Marcel on his fourth whiskey, he on his twelfth bourbon. "You don't need to wait for Kol. I could change you."

"And you would do that."

"I would."

"I don't have to sleep with you or anything, now do I?"

He leans back in his chair. "Do you know how old I am, Marcel?"

"A little over nine hundred, Kol told me once."

"Correct. So imagine what I've learned in all that time. You wouldn't regret it."

"I think more than a few of your partners would probably argue that."

He spreads his hands. "I can't help my intolerance for disappointment. But, no. This isn't an exchange of favors. I merely want to ask a question."

The human darts his tongue out to taste his lips. "You know, Klaus, somehow I don't think it's quite that easy."

"Oh but it is, I assure you. And all I ask in return is an honest answer."

What must Lucifer, if such a creature exists, feel when he makes his little deals- this pleasurable tightening of the stomach, this little anticipatory frothing of the gut, the pounding heart, accelerated breath- the smile that caresses his lips erotically as a lover?

He gets up with his drink in hand.

He walks round behind the boy's chair, sets his free hand down on the back, leans over to rest his chin on Marcel's shoulder.

"You're a twisted little thing, aren't you. You're so desperate to no longer be knocked about, to be looked down upon, that you would bind yourself to an eternity of what Kol and I have given you a mere taste of. Isn't that right," he whispers.

He watches Marcel's fingers tighten on his glass, his shoulders tense, his throat hitch. "That your question, Klaus?"

"No."

He trails his hand across Marcel's back to drape it across the other shoulder, shifts his lips to his opposite ear. "I want to tell you a little story, Marcel. You're no worse than the next man, yes? Not all sinner, nor entirely saint. Just a person. Just a man, trying to get by with a little luck and his saxophone." He turns his nose into the man's carotid, closes his eyes briefly, flicks them back open. "Just like a boy called Niklaus. A very quiet boy, a shy little thing, who had only to endure his father's constant abuse and somehow carry on. He liked horses. He was nice to his sister." He pauses at this last, and he closes his eyes once more, and how his heart still squeezes, thinking of this long-absent sister who slipped herself through his fingers so very long ago and never bothered to seek him out again. "But deep down, he was angry all the time. Just like you, mate. But still, he rarely raised his voice, he was never intentionally cruel, he always tried to help. He just wanted to be accepted."

He pulls back now, takes another sip, sets down his glass, brings both his hands to the boy's rigid shoulders. "You think that you're going to retain who you are, don't you. You think that all your morals, your principles, your esteem for human life- you think you can keep all that, don't you? You just want to be respected, to never not be pushed around again; you would never use your power as others have used their own against you." He leans in even closer, drops his voice a little lower. "But do you know, Marcel, perhaps a thousand years from now, perhaps in only a century, a decade, you will become what you hate most."

He jerks the boy's chair suddenly from beneath the table, yanks him out of it by the collar.

Marcel's glass scatters a thousand new constellations across the floor.

"Because it's intoxicating." He presses his chest right to the boy's back, leaning his hands forward onto the edge of the table so that Marcel is trapped between his arms, the boy positively a statue: do you see, mate, this is precisely what's he's talking about, this domination, this flinching cowardice stirred in the strongest of men- what an elixir it is.

You never get used to it.

"Imagine yourself in forty years, ninety, a hundred and fifty. The same face. The same young arms, legs, a back that will never hunch. But you've seen things, mate. Cities fallen, civilizations overturned, war after war after war. And now all your petty little principles don't matter; they've been ground to dust, just like those cities. Life is transitory, men are insignificant. You don't care anymore. You have sampled every sin, every vice, every pleasure, every horror. All of your humanity has been stomped down, snuffed out. Nothing matters anymore, except your strength, your speed, your superiority."

He crowds him harder into the table. "And now, my question to you, Marcel, is do you still want it?"

There is an eternity of silence between them, loud as the rumbling of the battlefield with its clattering carts and shrieking horses and howling soldiers.

"Yes," the boy spits out.

He opens his wrist in a flash, whips one arm up to clamp it round the boy's waist, jerks back his head, pries open his mouth, forces his bleeding arm to these lips that open with a gasp to admit him.

A sputtering, a heaving of the throat, a whiplash of the spine, flailing legs, thrashing arms-

And then the first tentative sip.

The delving of the tongue into the wound.

"That's it," he whispers, brushing the boy's ear with his fangs, the hand at Marcel's waist convulsing, digging down into cloth as the human begins to pull harder, his lips moving, his tongue flicking, one hand coming up to tremulously touch his wrist now, fingers cold, hesitant, fearful. "There we are. Just a little more, mate." Just precisely like that, with your teeth tentatively testing, your lips rough against him, your tongue warm inside him.

He strangles him slowly, his cheek to the boy's, his eyes flickering, his breathing ragged.

He drops him in a little pile just beyond the table, wiping his mouth as he looks down.

"Fantastic. I think you'll do nicely."


New Orleans, 2013

She wakes to the dipping of the bed beneath weight that is not her own, and snaps open her eyes.

"You're back," she whispers.

He crawls carefully forward onto the mattress, all the way up the rumpled covers to the pillow beside her own. "I was trying not to wake you. What are you doing still in your jacket?"

"I'm going to take that comment as a disappointed 'you're not naked- why aren't you naked' perv observation."

He smiles. "I didn't say that. It's just rather customary for people to remove their jackets before bed. Unless this is some new trend I'm a bit behind on."

She coughs the sleep from her voice, curls a little more in on herself, lets this gray fog that has not quite lifted its shroud from her cotton-swab brain drift down over her too-heavy eyes. "I was just waiting up for you, to chew you out for ratting me out to your boyfriend, and then I was going to head back to my hotel. I mean, as long as everything's settled down."

"It's quiet."

"Ok, then. I should probably go."

She sits up with an oh-God-that-is-the-spot orgasm of a back pop, and a blink clears this fog from her eyes and all the gauzy layers of this dark foot between them, and now with a frown she brings her knees in toward her chest to drape her arms over the caps and she gives him her little ok-spill head tilt, blinking down at him. "What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, 'what's wrong'? Sorry, I don't know what it is in ye olde British. 'Wherefore art thou knickers up your arse'?"

He looks down with a little laugh, but it's habitual, not heartfelt, it does not wet the eyes, burn the throat, rumble up from the stomach into the chest: it is a rehearsed thing, a covering-up and not a letting go, and what the hell prompts her to do it she does not know, but suddenly she reaches out with her fingers, and she carefully touches the edge of his hairline, skating her fingers in this bare ghost-brush of a thing from one side to the other.

He stares up at her like he always does, like this is the first time he's been touched in years, like he does not understand but he wants to, like this one blonde baby vamp no one ever wanted enough is the only thing he will ever ask for in his entire eternal life.


Caroline-

His brother-

Certainly Kol tried his temper, broke his things, conspired, poked, infuriated him in so many myriad bloody ways, but this night of deals struck, reminisces begun…these are not the things he remembers, Caroline.

What a burr is younger sibling. You wouldn't understand of course, love, but the gnat persistence of them, round and round they go, too quick for a swat, repelled by neither tongue nor lash, circling always back around with this insect perseverance-

And yet-

And yet they-

They should never be alone; 'younger'- they bear this title only because one has come before, because in this hierarchy called 'family' someone stands further up the rung, because though they have not been granted the divinity that is mother, father, still they are supposed to always protect-

But Kol-

Brother-

You went so quickly.

For a thousand years, he shaped himself into something without equal.

And then he stood impotently upon that step and he watched you die not the impermanent death he laid you down to sleep away in your silk-lined bed, but this forever thing of twisted Egyptian ash, stinking, crackling, smoldering on for two endless days.

"Did…everything go ok with Marcel?"

"Yes. We've come to a little agreement."

She drops her hand.

"Caroline," he blurts out.

She lifts an eyebrow.

To demand, bully, maneuver- all of these things he comprehends.

But to ask-

How precisely does this go, he begs of the boy he buried long ago, this maggot-eaten ruin she unearths bit by bit by bit.

"Yeah?"

He wets his lips.

He tilts his head.

He scrubs one hand down over his stubble and he looks away with a little frustrated half-sigh of a thing, and what a thing, to be abandoned by a vocabulary of a thousand years, to not have at his disposal one faint s'il vous plaît, a single raspy per favore, half an insignificant men fadlek.

"Kol was…a friend of Marcel's…back in the early 20th century. We sort of…ran rampant round this town. We spent a bit of our negotiations reminiscing."

"Oh," she says.

"You know what," she says.

"I'm actually really tired. Maybe I should just crash here for the rest of the night."


The look on his face, when she casually plumps this pillow behind her and she flops back against its perfectly-shaped mound, hair fanning out, coat flapping down.

It's funny, how tentatively this man moves, how a thousand years has honed his strut but never touched his tiptoe, how he can crush a man's skull with no bat of his eye but to slide himself up against a girl, to put his chin to her shoulder, his hand to her hip-

It takes him for-freaking-ever, to coordinate this cautious inch-by-inch embrace.


He tucks himself away in the dustiest of the unused rooms in this bleeding fuckin' behemoth of a parasite nest, and he settles down to wait.

You best hope this little dampening spell of yours keeps up, witches of New Orleans.

He's got himself an Original to notch into his belt.


A/N: The 'Handcuff King' is a reference to Houdini. I found a picture of him on a wharf in New Orleans in 1907, talking with a man having his shoes shined. I don't technically know if he performed there, but during this time period he performed all over the United States, so I feel it was probably a pretty safe bet he worked the crowds a bit while he was there. Also, if you want to have an idea of how Klaus 'redecorated' that brothel, look up 'The Ratcliff Highway murders'. But not if you'll be going to bed anytime soon. And 'Storyville' is the name of the red-light district that popped up in the late 19th century and survived until 1917. Rather idyllic name for a place like that, but it was named after the alderman who wrote the legislation that created it.

All of the foreign words Klaus uses while he is trying (In his own excessively awkward way) to ask for a little comfort mean 'please'. The first two are probably obvious, but the third is Arabic (or so the internet tells me) and probably not as easily recognized. (Although for all I know you're all fluent in it.)

Klaus saving Marcel from slavery is ridiculous. I want to explore a dynamic wherein Marcel is so hungry for power after being treated as a second-class citizen that he would be willing to jump through any hoops put forth by these horrible men, who try their best to shake him up, to see him crumble. I think he's sure he'll only use this newfound power to protect himself, but as Klaus was basically saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely. We'll see Klaus as his mentor as this very extended flashback continues, and I also want to really delve into the relationship between Klaus and Kol, and the disintegration of it that leads to Kol's daggering. I will be tackling Kol's perspective as well in the next flashback.

And you bet your sweet ass I made the turning of Marcel a little porny. Klaus is a twist. You know he's probably pitched a tent or two while strangling someone to death.

Anyway, thank you so much for all your support, and for not giving up on this series just because I'm a dork for history who doesn't allow Klaus and Caroline to bang nearly as much as they should. Ah well. We've still plenty of story to go; lots of time for sweaty lovetime later.