Chapter Text
England. April 15, 1501
“Mama, tell me a story.”
The child that rested his head in the crook of her neck was stirring again– he never went to sleep easily, especially not on the nights when she most needed him to rest. She wrapped an arm around him as the cart bumped along the dirt road, their bodies hidden beneath heaps of turnips, carrots, and heads of lettuce.
Caressing the back of his head, she looked through the crack in the wood at the moonlit lake they were passing over, the way the light danced weakly before vanishing as soon as they entered the forest. She knew he was afraid– he always asked for a story when he was afraid.
“Mama, please.” How could she say no to such begging? He was too sweet for her to deny, too beloved for her to make plead. Heaving a sigh, she tried to rock him in time with the cart’s bumps, hoping it would soothe him.
There were many stories to tell, but there was only one that he liked– the same simple story of what brought them there. At least, the version she’d told him was simple. Until then, he’d been but too little to comprehend the severity of their situation. Today, however, marked his eighth year of life. She knew much would change in the near future. She knew he was ready to know the full truth. After all, how could she continue to protect him if he remained naive?
Nothing remained for them in England, not anymore. It was time to start a new life. It was time for them to forget what had come before, to settle where he might grow and be safe… at least until it was time for them to once more be with those who would do anything for him. But until then, all he would have was a story.
“Once upon a time,” she began, “there was a princess.” He started to giggle, but she shushed him. “She was born in a land across the sea, Hispania, a beautiful place filled with good, Catholic people and brave explorers who ventured into the far reaches of the world. Some years before her birth, her parents– Fernando de Aragón and Isabel de Castilla– were wed, ending a struggle for the succession. Together, they welcomed six children. Princesa Isabel, Princesa Marisol, PríncipeJuan, Princesa Juana, Princesa María, and Princesa Catalina.
“Princesa Isabel de Asturias was married off to Prince Afonso of Portugal, but after his death was remarried to the now King of Portugal, Manuel. She was Queen of Portugal, my dear sister, until she died in childbirth. Now my little PrincesaMaría de Aragón is Queen of Portugal, and I hope she will live very long. My sweet little brother, Juan, was married to Margaret of Austria before the sickness took him. You were but a little thing, then, you didn’t know why Mother was so sad the day they brought me the news he had passed.”
He made a noise of empathy, whining as she coiled his curls between her fingertips. “My dear Princesa Juana de Castilla is now heir to everything, she was wed to the one they call Philip the Handsome. They call her ‘Juana la Loca,’ but I remember a fun-loving sister who people simply didn’t understand. And my little Catalina, they will marry her to Arthur the Prince of Wales this year. The work I did to secure the English alliance… it will be done.”
“But what about–?” The little boy yawned into his palm, though still so eager to hear the rest. “What about Princesa Marisol?”
She wanted to laugh, but she knew he was but a little thing, he didn’t understand that her name wasn’t truly ‘Mother,’ or ‘Mama.’ “Well, my darling one, Princesa Marisol had a different journey. She was thirteen when she was sent to England to be fostered by King Henry the Seventh and his young wife Queen Elizabeth of York. She was meant to be a companion to the Queen, to possibly marry well and secure in the King and Queen’s children a match for her younger sisters to forge an alliance against the French.
“The older she grew, the more she was invited to great parties hosted all over England. Before you were born, her parents learned of a mighty noble family with three eligible sons to wed. Lords Elijah, Niklaus, and Kol were highly desirable bachelors, none of whom seemed interested in settling. No one truly understood where they came from or what their business was in England, but none questioned it, either. Not that they could, even if they tried. She was nineteen years of age when she was presented to the three lords.”
“They were each handsome– her heart fluttered at the sight of them. She was told one of them would choose her, should she be so lucky as to be beautiful in their eyes. She had been so confident upon her arrival, but for a moment she ceased to be sure. She was relieved when Lord Niklaus took her hand, kissing the back of it as a gentleman should. She teased that she’d been expecting lords in England to be taller. He grinned and asked her to call him Klaus. He invited her to dance. It was enough to gain her trust. They’d moved onto the library, alone, and that was where he bit her.”
The little boy let out a gasp so loud, she quickly clamped her hand over his mouth, shushing him and reminding him not to make such noises. “But Mama, why?” He sounded so concerned. “Was he a vampire, like those stories?”
She nodded, rocking him gently. “He was, my dear. She did not know it. He drank her blood and held her close. He healed her and she forgot their conversation. All she knew was that they’d danced, that she would be invited again to speak with the Lords Elijah and Kol as well. For the sake of her parents, she would find the man most suitable for a match. She had thought of Lord Klaus without even considering his brothers– something about him drew her to him. But the next celebration brought an unexpected guest… and he made the choice to court not her, but Katerina Petrova.
“A girl from a noble and wealthy family in Bulgaria, she was brought to Lord Klaus’s birthday party and at once he seemed smitten by her. Princess Marisol was still a constant visitor, though she more often found herself speaking with the lords Elijah and Kol. Still, Lord Klaus told her enough for her to realize what they were, though she would never be able to tell a soul. She learned that Katerina Petrova was a means to an end… the person who could help Lord Klaus become a true hybrid– a vampire and a werewolf.
“Princess Marisol liked Katerina very much. But she could not remember to warn her of what was to come, though she might have liked to save the girl’s life. Katerina learned of the plan to kill her without need for Marisol’s words. She was stealing a precious moonstone when Princess Marisol discovered her. She did not mean to, but she ran to tell Lord Klaus. They stopped the girl from running. They kept her in a cellar, much to the princess’s dismay. The girl tried to kill herself, but they found her and healed her, as vampires can do.
“When the day came, Lord Klaus drank all her blood until she was dead. When she rose again, she rose as part of the undead. She ran and never looked back. She blamed Princess Marisol for everything. But her purpose had been served– she would not be bothered again. Lord Klaus was very pleased after he learned his spell had been successful. It was Princess Marisol who happened to be there one night when he wished to… celebrate his accomplishment. She was in the mood to celebrate, too, though she did not realize that she would soon find that this celebration had left her with a gift. “
The child wiggled in glee, thinking of the sorts of presents he’d received for his past name days. “A gift! What a wonderful thing, what sort of gift did he leave Princess Marisol?”
She smiled weakly, looking back out of the crack in the wood, darkness greeting her. The road was still long, but they would be out of England by morning. “He left her a special gift she holds close to her heart,” she whispered. “But he did not know he had given her this gift before he went to travel. He did not know of it until he returned, defeated, because he realized that he could not have the thing he wanted most– others like him. The spell done on the night of the full moon had given him what he should have always had… but had not granted him the power to bestow it on others. He’d been very angry. He told her to return to Spain, that there was nothing there for her anymore. He would not marry her, he would instead find her another nobleman to bring home to her parents. She remembered being hurt, her virtue compromised and nothing returned to her.
“It was good for her that she did not return to Spain immediately. He’d compelled her a man to marry, but she had not forgotten what had transpired nearly a moon prior. The day she realized her maiden’s blood would not arrive no matter how long she waited, she ran to their home. Lord Klaus was not there, but Lord Elijah was. She cried to him, truly sobbed in fear, telling him about their sin and the consequences. He was confused– he did not believe her, at least not until he compelled her and knew that she was not lying. She had been with no other, and could have received this blessing from no one but his brother. And so they made it known.
“Lord Klaus refused to believe it as well, until all the truths were made plain and it was undeniably a fact. He was to become a father, something made possible by the new life breathed into him the moment the wolf within him emerged. He knew a child was a weakness. All he could do was hide it. Hope that none ever connected it to him.
“Princess Marisol was wed hastily to one of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby. He was a kind man but he died soon after their wedding. She was compelled to believe he was the father of her child. They all called it his parting gift, they prayed she and the child would live. All present that fateful night that she gave birth remembered the same thing– the mother and babe died, buried swiftly. None would remember Princess Marisol.”
She paused for a moment, tears running down her face. She imagined the way her mother must have sobbed and shouted when she learned of her ‘death.’ Having already buried two children, she knew her mother must have felt an unimaginable pain when the news reached Spain. Yet she could not make this known, she could never see her family again. All to protect Klaus, all to protect their son. She would have done anything for her boy, but she could not say she would do the same for his father.
Sighing deeply and wiping her face, Marisol finished, “But the truth was, the princess and her child survived. They were set up in a beautiful cottage not far from Lord Klaus’s home. She was alone when she brought to life the son she loves more than anything. The boy who would one day grow to be as powerful as his father… though none knew in which ways. Lord Klaus believed the child would surely be a wolf. Lord Elijah speculated that the child would naturally be a vampire. Lord Kol thought the child stood a chance of being a witch. It was their sister, Lady Rebekah, who posited that the child could be any combination of two or three from the batch. None of them knew, particularly when Princess Marisol was the furthest from supernatural any of them had ever seen.”
“What was the baby?” She could not see his eyes, but she knew his pupils must have been as wide as saucers. “Was it a witch, a wolf, a vampire, or–?”
She shrugged, truly unsure what to tell him. “I don’t know, my love. It could be any of them. We won’t know until the babe is older. You are that babe, my dear. You could be a hybrid or a tribrid. We don’t know. You haven’t been able to use magic, that we know of. But with that temper of yours, I am certain you are a wolf. A vampire… it would remain to be seen.”
His little hands swatted at her face. “Mama, you’re Princess Marisol?”
“I was, peque. Once, a long time ago. I am only Marisol now. Before he left, he gave me one more gift. My immortality, so I might protect you. He named you Viktor, for his own name meaning ‘victory of the people,’ and because my people were conquistadors. He believed you would conqueror all.”
The boy almost sat up, but she stopped him from hitting his head on the wooden platform over which the vegetables lay. “But Mama, where is my father now?”
Marisol sighed, wishing she could have avoided the question. “I do not know, nene. They told me they might settle in Denmark for a while. They could not stay here anymore– word of their lordship was spreading like wildfire, particularly after it was made known that Lord Klaus had been courting a princess of Spain. It would have drawn a villain near, a bad man who would hurt you, me, and especially your father. It simply couldn’t be.”
“We can’t be together?”
“Not now, my love. Maybe not for a very, very long time. We will be safe where we are going. When you are older, perhaps, and able to protect yourself, we will look for your father. But it may be what will feel like forever until then. I don’t know. We must wait and see, my dearest.”
She felt him furrowing his eyebrows. “Mama, if I become a hybrid like my father, will I be able to protect him from this bad man?”
“I don’t know, Viktor,” she whispered. “But I hope you will not have to.”
_
New Orleans, Louisiana, April 15, 1820
“It’s his birthday, isn’t it?”
Klaus did not look up at Elijah, staring intently down at the courtyard where a young Marcel was fencing with Rebekah. He’d only been there a few weeks and had already made great progress. He tried to focus on that, on the boy he had in front of him, but Elijah’s incessant pressing gaze made him turn his head at last and admit, “Yes. He would be three-hundred and twenty-seven.” He withdrew his pocket watch. “At exactly… eleven forty-three. That was when she brought him into this world.” Screaming and sobbing. Squeezing my hand.
Elijah put a hand on his shoulder. “Perhaps it has been long enough. Many years have passed since Cadiz and Father has not found us here. It is the longest we have gone without being discovered– over a century. Our presence is discreet for now…”
Klaus rolled his eyes as he trailed off, knowing full well that Elijah wished to add, ‘It would be more so if you heeded my advice.’ As if he wanted or needed advice from his brother.
“It matters not,” he said dismissively. He did not wish to have this conversation– now or ever– with Elijah. “No one has ever once whispered about any other hybrids.” My son probably died a long time ago, along with my Sol.
“She was always clever,” said Elijah carefully. “She would have known how to keep him safe. He might very well be posing as a simple vampire. I am aware of how much she meant to you, Niklaus. You may one day regret not attempting to make contact.”
He was growing more agitated by the second. “You think I have not tried?” He lowered his voice when he saw Marcel looking up at him. “I have had vampires on the lookout for her for years. None have brought me back any evidence of her continued existence.”
“She could be killing them. None could have ever doubted what she was willing to do for Vik–”
Klaus grabbed him by the throat, cutting his words in half. “Do not say his name,” he spat, shoving Elijah back.
His brother’s expression hardened. “Your fear will always cripple you, Niklaus. If I must remind you, that fear was the reason she left the way she did in the first place.” Without waiting for a response, he turned and left.
The worst part was that Klaus knew Elijah was right.
“They say there is a princess among us tonight,” Kol told him, peering through the crowd as if he could have spotted a girl he’d never met. “Second daughter to the King of Spain. Ah– there he is, Lord Stafford!” He waved over a man known to be in proximity of the King’s court. “Lord Stafford, is it true that a princess of Spain is in attendance tonight?”
Lord Stafford, a portly man with a large mustache, began to laugh with his belly and nodded to a group of girls admiring a tapestry. “Do you see the young lady in the center, with the golden hairnet and the crimson red gown? You are looking at Princess Marisol, the favorite daughter of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.”
Klaus’s heart would have stopped if it could. When the woman turned sideways, he saw her delicate face, her full lips, her curious brown eyes and the way she smiled in delight as one of the ladies curtsied to her. He saw her humble hand reach out to hold the girl’s arm, he overheard her insisting she needn’t curtsy, that they were equals there and that she wanted them to be friends. He hadn’t been so dumbstruck by a woman since Aurora. That thought terrified him.
“Bring her to us!” said Kol, quite chipper. When Lord Stafford had gone, he whispered to Klaus, “She looks like a tasty little thing. Perhaps she’d like me to speak Spanish between her legs.”
“You will not disgrace a Princess,” said Elijah sternly from behind him, interrupting right as Klaus had been about to snarl at him to be quiet. He didn’t like the idea of Kol being anywhere near that woman– he wanted to know her himself.
“Look at her,” Kol insisted. “Even Nik’s already smitten.”
Klaus spoke between gritted teeth, “I am not smitten with a woman I’ve not even met. Humans are a means to an end, brother, I thought you understood that. There is no such thing as being smitten for them.”
His words died in his throat as Lord Stafford brought her over. She was even more beautiful up close, freckles dotting her cheeks. Her collarbones were perfect, the veins in her delicate neck pulsating with what could have been anxiety at the presentation. “Lords Elijah, Niklaus, and Kol,” said Lord Stafford. “May I present to you, Princess Marisol , daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile. The Catholic Monarchs, the recent victors of the Conquest of Granada, the financers of the explorer Christopher Columbus, who will lead a voyage into the Americas.”
Princess Marisol bowed deeply, looking up at them with such interest, he wanted to believe she was directing it all at him– and maybe she was, for a light blush darted over her face when their eyes met. “My lords,” she said, her accent like music to his ear. “I was honored to be invited into your home.”
Klaus immediately reached out to take her hand, kissing the back of it and leaning down. “You are quite welcome here, Princesa.”
“I will leave you to become acquainted,” said Lord Stafford, who knew as well as any of them– though it hadn’t been discussed– why a princess would be present at such a party.
Without missing a beat, the princess spoke as soon as he was gone, “I expected the lords in England to be taller.”
Kol began to laugh heartily, but Klaus’s lips only curled into a curious smile. Oh, he had to know this girl. “Please, Princesa,” he said cordially, “if I may have a dance.”
Oh, how they’d danced. How he’d spun her around and kept her close, listening to her heart skip around each time his hand made contact with her waist. The look in her eyes, that light that shone in them, he wanted to keep seeing it forever. “Come to the library with me,” he offered after three dances. “I would like to show you our collection of books.”
The party was forgotten by the both of them– it didn’t matter anymore. He fought back a grin each time she withdrew a book and marveled at the embossing, at the leather covers, at the perfectly-textured pages. She loved the colors, she loved the way they were organized. He knew she wanted to stay there. He wanted to know more about her– he compelled her to keep talking to tell him everything and anything. She, of course, couldn’t help the words that spilled out of her mouth. He liked hearing it all, how she held back nothing and played along with his words.
“We have been here for hours!” she realized at one point, spinning around and looking at the chandelier overhead. “I have never held such a lengthy conversation.”
He tucked his hands behind his back, fighting a smile. “Nor have I. Your company is enjoyable. I admire the fire in you.”
She looked at him over her shoulder, wiggling her eyebrows, “Does my fire allure you, Lord Klaus? I simply like telling people the things they ought to know.”
Despite the compulsion, he could tell it was in her nature to be brutally honest. “You have not shied away in the slightest from such with me.”
“Of course not. I am a princess, I speak my mind to anyone, even a lord.”
She amused him, speaking as though this was a game they had been playing for years– a game only for them, where they partook in fast-paced banter and retorted back and forth like old friends. It awakened something in him when she’d bickered with him for a few minutes about book covers and ink spots. They each held their own well in an argument.
He fed on her that night, pressing her into the bookshelf and holding her shoulders as she sighed in delight– she was enjoying the pain. How, he did not know. Her fingers were in his hair, the sound of her breaths filled his ear. It excited him, it made him want to do this again and again.
For whatever reason, he started telling her about his past. About his cruel father and his lying mother. They’d sat down and she’d held his hand, furrowing her brows with sympathy and caressing his wrist with her delicate fingertips. She had told him how unfair that was for him, how proud he should be of where he was now in spite of them.
But how could he believe her words? How could he want more from them? Love was a vampire’s greatest weakness. He tried to pretend it hadn’t happened.
Courting Katerina to keep her close hadn’t made him forget Marisol. In fact, he spent more time with Marisol than with Katerina. He compelled her to forget the hours of conversation, the games they played, the art lessons he gave her. It was almost a distraction from his plan to sacrifice Katerina– until it was Marisol herself that unintentionally kept the girl from escaping. He’d felt more powerful than ever before the day he unbound himself, the day that blasted ritual finally happened and he was a true hybrid. All he wanted was to share it with her, that new feeling of bliss. Becoming a wolf again reminded him of every moment he spent with her.
She had clearly been feeling something stirring, too. She came to him just before he left to look for wolves that he could turn into hybrids– it was nighttime; she had been staying at their manor for some weeks already and keeping Rebekah company. Sometimes he went to find Marisol, sometimes she came to find him. The princess knew very well it was a risk, but he knew she enjoyed that– she’d told him during their talks that because he was a vampire, she no longer cared about getting caught speaking with him so late at night.
“You could compel them to forget it,” she said simply. “You could compel them all to leave us alone to have our conversations in peace. None will question you and none will compromise me.”
She admired him for being a vampire and she’d encouraged him to become a hybrid despite knowing what it meant for Katerina. A part of him wondered if it was because of jealousy, but he knew that in the end it was the deepest sympathy she had for him. Not to mention she knew of an elixir Elijah had that was supposedly meant to keep Katerina alive. She firmly believed both things could be true at once. Of course, Katerina had gotten ahead of herself and had been reborn after that ritual. At any rate, she’d served her purpose.
“Now that Lady Katerina is gone,” said Marisol, shuffling on her feet and tucking her hands nervously behind her back when she found him that night, “there was something I wished to discuss with you, my lord.”
He looked up at her, away from the canvas where he was gladly painting a clearing in the woods with a full moon shining overhead. “What is it, love?”
She wrung her hands anxiously. “We spend so much time together… Klaus. We have told each other everything about our families, about our hopes and dreams. I have… fancied you since before you became a hybrid and I admire you more now that your confidence has grown. Will you now court me?”
Klaus didn’t know what to tell her. Did she truly want that? He struggled to accept that she was bringing this up on her own, that it was not the compulsion making her think she cared for him. “Why is it that you wish for me to court you?”
“I believe I am starting to fall in love with you. I would like… more.”
So he decided to break her heart for the first time, and it did not start with words, but rather with a grim expression, because he feared what could happen if he told her that he, too, wanted more. “I cannot love you,” he told her. “Love is a vampire’s greatest weakness. Humans are a means to an end, not partners one shares anything with. I will not stay here much longer, I must travel and build my hybrid army.”
Her lip trembled; he knew he’d wounded her. “Do you not enjoy our conversations?”
He set his paintbrush down. She couldn’t read the look on his face. “I enjoy our conversations, but how could they ever be more? Why should they be?”
He knew she was feeling the urge to cry but was actively trying to suppress it. “Why do you compel me to forget everything, then? If not to hide your enjoyment, your vulnerability? I give you every assurance that I am genuine, that I am safe, yet you do not trust this.”
“I do not trust,” he said sharply. How could he, when his heart had been broken before? When he’d trusted and been betrayed? This woman had the power Aurora had, to hurt him.
She started to tear up, and he realized she had not stopped looking at him with love. “You know I am compelled to say the truth, and you ought to know that it is the truth when I say that you are most deserving of love and affection. You have suffered much and though you can be cruel– which of us isn’t cruel, really, you’ve seen my own temper flare– you are an artist, a creator. Your goal is not to bring suffering but rather to end your own and build beautiful things without fear. It may seem selfish but I see it as the truest version of yourself. That is who I fell in love with, the truth of the man you are, not the man you think you need to be for me.”
He placed his hand on hers and held it close, not believing he deserved such words. “Even if I could bring myself to love again, I would only invite you into a life of danger. How can I promise you the world when I am still not safe in it? Until I have my hybrids, I will have no means to protect myself, much less you, from Mikael.”
She used her other hand to place her fingers over his lips. “I would leave all safety behind to be with you. Who else would I argue with about art? Who else would I share a love of music with? I wish to have that with no one else. I renounce the title of Princesa, I will gladly be no one if it means I can be yours. Court me or marry me, I do not care which it is, but I love you and I should be lucky to have the love of someone as wonderful as you. You may not see it, but I do. If you refuse to, I might need to strike some sense into you.”
She raised her hand playfully, and he caught her wrist. He kissed her arm then drew her in for a deep kiss, the sort that made her stumble into his arms. His fangs slid into her neck, her body became a puppet for him, her hands uncertainly moving around his shoulders as he drew his own down her hips, beginning to tear at her dress. He let out a laugh as she made her best attempt to rip his clothes away, rolling her eyes when he swatted her hands aside and removed them himself.
“Do not roll your eyes at me,” he demanded, though she took it to be playful. “You will have what you seek. I thought princesses were supposed to be far shyer than this.”
“I know what it is that I want,” she said surely. “It’s you, Klaus, I have no reason to be shy or afraid. I have heard how women whisper, I know what many crave. My mother taught me that I hold something precious that I should only give during sacred matrimony, but in my mind I have been wed to you since the first moment we bickered and you told me I had a sharp tongue that you rather liked. I want to have you and I want you to have me.”
He hadn’t bedded a human since Aurora, certainly never one that he felt such a strong affection for. He saw the way she kept her eyes shut as he kissed every inch of her skin, as he curled his fingers inside of her and elicited from her sounds and shivers that brought him to a high. Without knowing much, she’d sat over his hips and rolled her own as if she was dancing. It excited him so much, he threw his head back and groaned, which had apparently invited her to kiss his own neck as if she were a vampire, too. Oh, how he wanted to turn her in that moment.
In that same neck she muffled cries of delight when he rolled his hips into hers and made love to her in a way he had not done with anyone in such a long time. “More, please,” she begged him even after the third time he’d made love to her, kissing her breasts and caressing her bare thighs. “I must have you all to myself, forever.”
He looked into her eyes, carefully cupping her face. For a moment, he considered telling her that he was already hers, that he wanted more from this, too. But he could not. He feared that she would do to him what had been done before. He kissed her on the forehead and compelled her to sleep and remember only that lust had brought them to this moment. Not love. Never love.
He’d thought of her the entire time he was traveling to find his wolves. He thought of her when he wasn’t able to turn them. She would think so little of him, she would think him a failure. She would leave him, she would shun him, she would turn on her heel and say she deserved someone more capable.
Yet when he returned, she said nothing of the sort. He cried in her arms and she held him, kissing his head and telling him there must be something he hadn’t thought of, some other way it could work. She asked him, “If a human must drink the blood of a human to transition, should a werewolf not drink the blood of a wolf to transition?” He realized what the missing ingredient was– a simple human’s blood was not the answer, it was the doppelgänger’s blood he needed. He realized he was doomed to be alone until another human doppelgänger came along.
He was angry at himself. He realized he would not be able to make a hybrid army to protect himself, to protect her. He needed to keep her free from all danger. He said things he did not mean, he compelled her a man to marry and told her– without compulsion– to return to Spain, that he could not marry her.
Then she came back. She told Elijah she had not bled. Klaus didn’t believe her at first; she had to be using this as a way to stay close. How could she not understand he wanted to protect her? That he was scared to keep her close, lest she leave him of her own accord? But when he realized she was telling true, when he realized that the child she carried was truly his, he knew he’d condemned her. The woman he’d started to love, he’d put her in severe danger.
He wed her to one of the Stanleys to save her reputation. When the man died of illness, he entered the house and compelled all the servants to do his bidding. To pretend Marisol and the babe died in childbirth, to ‘bury’ them swiftly and speak not a word more. All the while he had her set up in a cottage near enough for him to visit her every day as her time grew nearer and nearer. She called herself his ‘wife’ playfully, she would kiss him and dance with him as best as her growing belly allowed.
He was there when her water broke, he was there the whole time she was giving birth to their child. He hugged her, kissed her, watched her cradle their son and hold him close to her heart. He was scared, at first, to hold the babe. But she handed him over and Klaus’s heart broke a little, in a way he never expected it to break. He forgot everything for a moment; all that mattered was that boy, that new life. His son. His love. Their family.
He knew he could never take them with him. He knew Mikael would be upon them sooner than late– he always found them. He waited a year to turn her for the sake of the babe, but all the while she was hoping they might have another child. She didn’t understand that he already had too much to lose. When it came time for him to leave, he compelled her to forget it all. To think that only lust had brought them here. To forget that he loved her, to forget that they’d ever lived as a family.
He asked that she forget the nights that Viktor slept between them, while Klaus’s hand held hers. He asked that she forget the way they liked to dance, the way they could spend hours talking. He asked her to burn the letters he wrote to her, to erase from her mind all the romantic feelings she had for him. Let her remember him only as a man she fell into bed with. Let Mikael never be able to use them against each other, let her protect her son without the urge to go and find Klaus again. He locked her memories away in a safe only one person could access– and it wasn’t her.
He found letters she could never send to her mother but wished to, where she wrote about how she was so happy with her son, how she loved Klaus and wanted to be with him forever. He burned them. His beautiful Sol was left with no memory of how much she cared for him. No memory of how she’d called herself his ‘wife’ and how he’d playfully replied that he was her ‘husband.’
He flinched when he felt Rebekah’s hand on his shoulder. He realized a tear had slid down his cheek. From below, Marcel was looking up at him in confusion– perhaps he’d noticed he was crying, perhaps not. “Nik,” said Rebekah gently. “Elijah’s right. You ought to find them.”
“No,” he decided. “They’re safer away from here– away from me. Mikael will come. He always does. It’s only a matter of time.”
He used that justification each year when Viktor’s birthday passed, when he remembered how many years he’d been away from his son. He told himself he’d made the right choice in 1919, when Mikael came and took away the son he’d gotten to raise. Viktor would have suffered a worse fate than Marcel, that much he knew. Had Mikael gotten his hands on him or on Marisol, he wouldn’t have stopped where he did with Marcel. He would have tortured them to no end, he would have ripped them apart before Klaus’s eyes.
Viktor and Marisol were better off without him.
_
A/N: Never done this before but I have two fics going at the same time. Three if you count my HotD one! Holy crap. Anyway, this concept was in my head for a while and I decided to bring it to life. FC for Marisol is Alba Galocha (who plays Joanna of Castile in The Spanish Princess; fitting considering she would be Marisol’s sister) and FC for Viktor is Nuno Gallego (who plays Cristian in Spanish series called Olympo). He gives Mikaelson vibes to me.
Enjoy, my loves.