the monster in me

Trying. He understood that all too well and that was enough to take the wind from his sails. They had spent the last thousand years trying to escape what they had been made to be. Had any of their attempts borne fruit? Perhaps. It didn’t mean that their few successes outweighed their failures though, and no matter what intentions Niklaus had at heart, or how they, precisely, they were going to work to protect Hope from the threats looming over them, they always would take a back seat to what went wrong. For centuries he had believed that they were merely learning from their mistakes, that one day they would move past it all, but the hope had eventually died. It was too great a weight to put on their Hope or either of Henrik’s children. Whatever mistakes were made here lay at the feet of their parents.

Dark eyes narrowed, fixing on his brother as he Elijah shook his head. ”I would never expect you to. Once upon a time you were a good father to another, I’ve seen what you can be.” His counsel with his brother over Marcel, his attempts at helping to tutor the boy himself, the same way he had with his nephew and nieces, had not always gone over well, his attempt to reforge the relationship between his brother and his son even worse. Trying then hadn’t been enough. Now Elijah sighed and nodded. ”I would ask that you let me help you try, but there are mistakes I have no wish to repeat.” It wouldn’t stop him from trying to wring an agreement out of Niklaus to free the witch however.

The mistakes he had made with Aurora had been buried for the better part of a thousand years. Doing that had allowed Niklaus to move on, instead of being permanently tethered to a lost love. And how allowed Aurora to wedge herself back between them now. The truth had torn at Niklaus, that much was obvious as he shoved at his curls, leaving them standing on end, his eyes shut as he tried to tear the disturbed vampire from between them. Elijah made a low sound in his throat, something akin to agreement to his brother’s words. ”I agree candidness is the best course. As is a united front against them, one that carried us through those fields safely.” That would have been the perfect opportunity to request that Maeve Kelly be freed, but that would be an immediate foot off the safe path, triggering one of those mines before they even taken a half dozen steps together. That secret was blown open, there was time to piece it together before Ms Kelly tried to take matters into her own hands and inevitably failed.

Humour finally carved its lines around Elijah’s mouth as Niklaus took his glass. He swirled his own in the air as he settled in one corner of the couch. ”It has always been a problem in our world,” he murmured. Elijah held his glass out, angling it the same way Niklaus had. ”To trying. May we manage what we never have been able to.” The sort of teamwork that would stop their aunt’s threat, the sort of brotherly bond that would allow a child to be shielded while the woman who’d been taken to help do just that was freed. They would stand on that line between Dahlia and the children and it would hold.

Tagged: NIKLAUS MIKAELSON (The End) * Word Count: 577