"You and me were like the stars.
We were lighting up the dark.
One minute you were in it, the next you were gone.
I don't really get it, where did it go wrong?"

The faintest sound of blood, dripping onto the marbled floors beneath them, with chains rattling from the weak struggles of a vampire being bled dry, was all the noise that could be heard within the Mikaelson mansion.

Dark eyes remained on the vampire in question, allowing a wicked smile to form across his lonely lips. He didn't used to care much about how long he went between kisses, between sexual encounters, but it had been seventeen days since he had seen Darcy, since he had gotten a chance to kiss her deliciously plump lips. It had made him bitter, despite everything she had brought out in him telling him to be the better vampire. Lately, it was getting harder and harder, in the face of the actual attempts on his life he had faced from the people who Darcy held dear, the ones he vowed to protect for her alone.

Sparing Damon and Elena had been the hardest thing he had done, but he did it for her. She wouldn't like what he was doing to Damon then, but he couldn't have anymore attempts on his life, not if he was going to find her and spend forever with her.

"There we go," Kol murmured, and he walked up to stare right into Damon's eyes. "Rip your heart from your chest."

"I can't." Damon's lips twisted into a snarl, his eyes darkening much more than the light blue should've allowed. "You have me in chains."

"Not finished then." Kol took the blade in his hands and slid it down Damon's arm, slicing through the muscles and spilling more blood than he usually liked to do in these kinds of instances. When it came to draining someone of vervain, he liked to draw it out, but that was the old Kol, the one who didn't care about anything. He did care, cared so much about Darcy that he was trying to get it over with as quickly as he could.

Cutting through the arm was a painful way to do it, but Damon lost a lot of blood that way, enough that Kol was already ready to try again as the wound sealed itself back up.

It was his sister's idiocy that led him here to torturing Damon in the first place. Their mother was gone, for the time anyways, but Rebekah had to dig into the Salvatore logging history. The Salvatore logging history: she basically screamed to them all that she was looking for a white oak tree, that had been made from a sapling from the original white oak tree that they were all bound to, so she could destroy all traces of it.

Rebekah and Sage had managed to track it all down, to the wood that had been used to make Wickery Bridge. They were in the process of rebuilding Wickery Bridge, so they were able to burn all traces of the wood—except what the Salvatores needed to make white oak stakes, apparently.

Kol remembered that night vividly. He was drunk, stumbling out of the Grill and thinking about where Darcy might've gone—or what might've made her leave—when Damon came out of nowhere and staked him. From the way it burned him, he knew in an instant that it was white oak wood that would kill him, and he managed to get Damon off, only to be staked in the back by Elena. Elena's wasn't able to get through his shoulder blade, whereas Damon's had come dangerously close to his heart. Kol, however, had an upper hand to both and fought them off.

"I don't know how many of these you have, but if you know what's good for you lot, you'll bring them all to me by morning. And come alone, or I'll kill you for good measure."

He shuddered to think of what Darcy might think of him if she saw what he was doing, to her friend no less, but this was his chance to protect himself, as she had asked him to do, and maybe find out more about where she was and why she left. If anyone knew, it would be Damon and Elena.

Kol knelt down in front of Damon and gave him a pleasant smile. "Sorry, mate. It's nothing personal. You're just on vervain and all, and I have some questions that need honest answers. I'm sure you understand."

Damon's teeth ground together, his eyes locked within Kol's. "I don't care about Klaus anymore. I will kill you."

"I'm sure you will." Kol smirked. "You fancy Elena, right? So why don't you tell me something Elena doesn't know about you, something that might make her hate you if she ever did?"

Damon knew the response to his only answer wasn't going to be pleasant, but it was the only thing he knew that might make Elena hate him, the only thing she didn't already know about him.

His jaw clenched. "I slept with her sister."

Darcy had mentioned that she slept with a vampire once, that she had lost her virginity to someone she trusted but didn't really care about in an intimate way, and Kol had never pressed for answers. He didn't really care to know, but hearing that it was Damon who had had Darcy, who had touched her and held her in a way that Kol burned to do again, enraged him. It burned jealousy deep within the pits of his gut that couldn't even begin to compare to any other emotion he was currently feeling.

He allowed some of that rage to come out and stabbed Damon through the shoulder, this time leaving the blade inside of him so he couldn't just heal himself better in an instant.

Damon groaned. "What? Can you blame me?"

"If you know what's best for you, Damon, shut your damn mouth right now," Kol spat though his clenched teeth, but he was struggling to see past the red, past the green. All he could see were images of himself ripping Damon's heart from his chest.

Darcy would never forgive you if you did that.

It was the only way Kol was able to pull himself away from Damon, to turn himself away so that he could attempt to stifle his rage.

"Oh come on," Damon snorted. "We all know you don't care about her, not really. It was all some sick, elaborate lie for your own amusement."

Kol knew that arguing with him about the matter was senseless, so instead, he turned back towards Damon and stared him right in the eyes. "Where is she?"

"I don't know," Damon confessed. "She didn't tell any of us where she was going, not even Elena. She probably knew this would happen."

Kol's eyebrows furrowed. "So she just left? Didn't tell anyone where she was going or why?"

"She just left," Damon said.

He noticed the way Damon worded that carefully. Of course he knew that people had found creative loopholes to resist certain aspects of compulsion over the years, but Damon's was far from creative, or subtle.

Kol stood in front of him, locking his gaze. "Why did she leave?"

Damon and Kol were no longer alone, and Klaus made sure to announce himself well. Throwing open the door to the empty room that Kol had turned into a makeshift torture chamber, Klaus stepped inside, with Stefan Salvatore following directly behind him. Stefan had a good impassive face, but Kol noticed the rage burning in his eyes, at the sight of his brother's pain and blood scattered about on the tarp Kol had thought to put down on the floor. Klaus would've been angry if he hadn't, and Kol was at least trying to keep things tame. Klaus couldn't hurt him anymore, but that didn't mean Kol wanted to provoke anger or violence. Any time spent arguing was time away from finding Darcy, from finding a way to make her immortal whenever she did come back to him.

That was one comfort that Kol had to get him through each day. She would come back to him.

Stefan had a stake in each hand, stakes that closely resembled the white oak stakes that Elena and Damon had used on him previously. Kol was cautious to believe that these were actually the stakes, but they looked like white oak wood.

Kol turned back to Damon and stared into his eyes again. "Are there only two remaining stakes?"

Damon's teeth clenched. "No. There are three."

"If all stakes aren't brought to me, if any of the stakes brought to me aren't, in fact, the stakes made from the white oak tree, I want you to kill your brother."

"They're white oak stakes!" Stefan exclaimed. "Would you like to come over here so I can demonstrate?"

"There are two stakes in your hand, and Damon, who can now be compelled, has informed me that there are three," Kol snapped.

Stefan sighed. "We're working on finding the third one."

Kol smirked at him, allowing the darker sides of him to come out. "Work harder."

"Why?" Stefan asked, with a tone that was almost mocking him. "Don't want Elena to find it?"

Kol rolled his eyes. "If I was scared of Elena Gilbert, I wouldn't still be here."

"You probably should be," Stefan said. "You underestimate how much she values her sister."

Everyone knew what Stefan said would enrage Kol, and Klaus only watched his brother's fury burn out of him with a huge smile on his face. Though he didn't think that love was a weakness his family could afford, especially in a time like this, he rather enjoyed seeing the darker side of his brother again.

"Bring the last stake, or I will make sure you all regret it, even if it means hunting down Darcy and dragging her back to town myself."

The chains began to rattle behind Kol, and a dark smile twisted his face. He turned back towards an enraged Damon, who struggled against his restraints, despite his severely weakened state.

"Don't touch her!" he growled. "Leave Darcy alone!"

Kol allowed his dark smile to grow smug, to twist into a smirk that Darcy had called his most annoying charm. "You have absolutely no power over me. I will do whatever I want with her."

He knew that if he stayed around tormenting Damon more, he might not allow Stefan to take him. He hadn't gotten the answers he wanted, but with his brother back home, he wasn't willing to risk Darcy's safety that way. She had mentioned being afraid of his mother and Klaus, so if she was running from his brother, he wasn't going to allow his brother to find her.

Klaus grabbed Kol's arm, before he could get past him through the doorway, and a dark smirk lingered on Klaus' lips, one that told the story of a threat that Kol had no interest in hearing. "While I love this side of you, I must warn you about what will happen if you turn her."

"Fuck off."

There wasn't much more of this that Kol could take in that moment, not without doing something he couldn't undo. Darcy wouldn't like what he had done to Damon, but it was forgivable. If he killed him, or even Stefan, Darcy might never forgive him for that.

He was up in his room as fast as his legs could carry him there, walking into the bathroom to get the blood off of his hands, and he found himself staring at his dark reflection in his mirror. The dim lighting above him only cast a shadow over his face that was an old friend, someone he hadn't seen in many years—more than a century.

It wasn't a friend he wanted to meet again, and he found himself punching his fists into his mirror, shattering all corners of the mirror on impact. He didn't stop there. He continued punching the glass, breaking off every tiny piece of it, until there was nothing but bare bone left on his knuckles, ripping through both skin and muscle to get there.

He knew it would heal back in just a few moments, but for that brief moment, he wanted to feel the pain, the raw agony that might get his mind off the pain inside of his heart.

Darcy, why did you have to say goodbye?

A/N: The lyrics are from the song Delete by Story Untold.

So this is the official end of Flicker! I'm working on chapter seven of part two, which will be called You and Me, and I'm going to post it immediately. I'm only going to post the prologue, however, and then I'm going to wait a few days to try and get a few more chapters ahead, just to have chapters to post in case life gets in the way. I try to write one chapter a day for this story at least, but sometimes that just doesn't happen. I'd hate to leave you guys waiting too long!

Right now what's getting me behind is this Kai story I'm working on. It's a lot of fun to do. It's my first ever Kai story. This wasn't my first ever Kol story, but it's the best one I've done to date, I believe, and it has the best writing of them all.

Enough of that. Thank you guys so much for reading my story! This has had the best response of any story I've ever written, which makes me smile. The hard work I've put into trying to better my writing has paid off! I know I've still got things to learn and ways to improve, but you guys reading this story, commenting, and loving it like you all seem to do makes me smile. So thank you guys so much! :)

As always, read, review, and most importantly, enjoy!

EDIT: The sequel is up! Go look for it on my page. :)