A/N- Thank you for reading.

Klaus doesn't jump in surprise when his cellular phone vibrates in his pocket, but he comes close.

Perhaps because he was in proximity to his siblings whom he hadn't seen for two centuries and was forgetting the steady advance of time.

Even though, intellectually, he understood that nearly one thousand years had passed, he still had trouble wrapping his mind around the fact that they were standing in a restaurant in Mystic Falls.

In a building larger and more ornate than anything that had been in their little village.

The booze was better too.

Or…

Perhaps because he was surrounded by supernatural beings.

Vampires, doppelgangers, witches just around the corner and…from what Stefan had been able to gleam from his very drunk older brother, perhaps even a werewolf or two.

Or, perhaps because with the amount of running around he's done this evening; he's surprised he hasn't dropped or lost the damn thing.

After all, humans didn't build things to last these days.

In the silence that has fallen over the Grill, pregnant with anticipation, the vibration of his device is clearly audible, and he makes sure to clutch it in his hand before it could be snatched away.

Rebekah was in the far corner, sulking and glaring at him, like as not weighing up her chances of screaming at him without too violent a retaliation.

Possibly she was trying to judge his mood but considering that he himself couldn't be certain what he was feeling, he didn't think she'd have an easy time of it.

He unlocks his phone and sees a message from Caroline, his heart speeds up almost to human pace before he manages to read the text.

Text Message

Caroline: Your brother Kol is awake.

Caroline: He wants to see you.

Caroline: Said if he doesn't know where you are, he's going to run around screaming your name until you turn up.

Caroline: I don't think he knew you were alive.

Anything she'd typed after the first text was redundant, Kol's default setting while awake was chaos.

Typically, the kind that was the most inconvenient for Klaus and anyone else in the near vicinity.

Looking up, his eyes dart to everyone visible as he determines his next move and then everyone else as he contemplates them all like pieces on a chessboard.

Damon hadn't moved any muscles beyond what was necessary to continue his drinking.

Elena and Stefan were in the bathroom, comforting each other with declarations of love and sweet nonsense.

Elijah was still in the parking lot, his spine clicking back into place at a slower rate since his venom was making its way through his blood stream.

Katerina was hovering nearby at a distance she thought was out of range of his senses. She was wrong and he suspected waiting for Elijah to regain consciousness.

Caroline was safe in a house that protected by magic, with two Bennett witches that would keep her alive, primarily out of affection for her and secondarily because they could fathom what he would do to them if she was harmed.

Mikael was out there somewhere in the burning night, hunting him down.

And Kol was waiting impatiently to take his turn in the bloody family reunion.

But, if he was going to survive Mikael, he needed his siblings either behind him or out of the way.

Did the Grill have a cellar he could shove them in while he handled matters above ground?

Text Message:

Nik: Send him to the Grill, sweetheart.

Caroline: He's on his way.

Caroline: Stay safe!

What little good luck he held tonight lingered long enough for Elijah to regain consciousness and Kol to arrive after he had finished formulating his plan.

The door to the restaurant is nearly torn off its hinges and his two half-brothers flash inside just as Elena and Stefan emerge from the bathroom.

He doesn't dare look into their eyes.

"Well, now everyone's here, more or less, we can begin," He proclaims, loudly as he had been expecting to have to speak over two or three outraged siblings.

When there's only silence, he doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He claps his hands behind his back and fixes a placid smile on his face to hide his nerves.

"If I'm going to have any chance of defeating Mikael, I'll need to lure him into a trap. This is where Elena comes in…"

He nods to the terrified girl who has her arms crossed defensively over her chest.

"She is going to be the bait, Katerina…who I suspect can hear me now that she's moved closer, will contact Mikael under the pretext of making a deal and get him to the Quarry; offering him the blood of a doppelganger in exchange for her safe passage out of town."

His ears pick up an outraged scoff, followed by her consent and he continues.

"Once Mikael is dead…again, we can deal with any of the vampires from the tomb, the witches who tore down the veil to the Other Side and the hundred and one supernatural problems that I'm sure will arise between now and then."

He meets Stefan's eyes and pre-empts his question,

"Naturally, while I'm busy killing Mikael, you will be whisking Elena off somewhere safe…also, if you could perhaps locate the moonstone while you're at it…"

"I have the moonstone, Niklaus," Elijah interrupts, his voice raspy and distant as he draws a pristine white handkerchief from his pocket and staunches the bleeding on his neck. "That is, if you didn't steal it from me after leaving me lying in the street."

Technically he'd left him lying in a parking lot, but he supposed it was splitting hairs.

There were a few ways to respond to his older brother.

He could apologise, he could ignore that remark and continue outlining his plan…

Or he could be petty.

"And what possessions of mine did you steal after I was cursed into wolf form for two centuries?" he demands,

"Was I left with anything or was it all parcelled out or burned in celebration?"

Elijah and Kol had always resembled each other strongly, with their similar colouring and there was a time when Klaus had actually been jealous of that. After all, he'd loved his older brother the most so why must he be cursed with their mother blonde hair and blue eyes.

Now, they resembled each other more due to their matching expression of incredulity.

"Celebration?" Elijah echoed faintly, "Nikaus, I mourned you for centuries…I consulted every witch that could be bought, bribed or blackmailed into aiding my attempts to bring you back. It consumed my every waking moment at the expense of what happiness I might have had."

In the distance, Katerina Petrova scoffs and while he is the only one that can hear her, he suspects Elijah will be getting a full debrief later.

Perhaps his older brother meant to continue his monologue, but their younger brother butted in to make his opinion on the matter known.

"I'll admit, I did celebrate your death when I first heard about it," he confesses, moving to rest his hands on the back of a chair and lean against it,

"Hell, I painted the town every colour of the rainbow, but that was because I assumed you being gone was a temporary thing…I never imagined that we couldn't…" he breaks off with a cough and recovers with a roguish grin,

"Can you believe that I actually began to miss you? And Elijah's not wrong, when we found out that spells wouldn't work and that we couldn't locate you on the Other Side…well, that definitely changed things."

"You couldn't find me on the Other Side because I wasn't there!" Klaus shouted, his eyes glowing yellow as veins danced around them,

"I was cursed to be a wolf for centuries, unable to enter New Orleans, unable to seek help and unable to even run with other wolves because I was so clearly other."

His fangs dropping from his gums make it difficult to talk and he has to swallow and force them back,

"You speak of having missed me," he seethes, "But which of you was it that welcomed Mikael to New Orleans with open arms? The one that forged the letter luring me to the swamp where the witches cursed me?"

His words fall like musket balls, clattering on the wooden boards ruined by years of chairs being scraped back, furniture being moved incorrectly, various chemicals being poured on them with more focus on sanitization than preservation of the wood and the uncountable steps trodden by generations of people that had been born, lived and died in this very place where his family had found their immortality.

"You accuse one of us of betraying you?!" Elijah whispered, "One of us having condemned you to a life of loneliness? Of being so cruel? No, Niklaus, while you were with us, we hid behind the façade of humanity; we pretended to be horrified by your actions and feigned goodness, none of us would have done this."

It appears he is trying to appeal to his logic or maybe his brotherly love.

Niklaus only snorts, "I remember every second of that spell that cursed me, including the ingredients they used including the blood of family willingly given. Now, as I didn't make a habit of offering my blood to any witch that happened across my path and as we all know Mikael is not my father, it rather narrows down the list of suspects, wouldn't you say?"

Both brothers recoil in surprise that would have confirmed their innocence had it not been in unison.

Not that it mattered, they had more important issued on hand at the moment.

He says as much before finishing his plan and once everyone has their orders, they scatter into the night.

Save for Kol, who lingers at his car, his face inscrutable as Klaus unlocks it and opens the door.

"Not to be the bearer of bad news and all but…Finn and Sage are around here somewhere."

Klaus dropped into his seat and swallowed a curse.

Finn was here as well?

For the briefest of moments, Klaus found himself wishing he was a wolf again.

Grayson Gilbert's medical office had never been to Richard's liking.

It hadn't been decently remodelled since the fifties.

Which is why he'd be glad to burn it to the ground tonight.

But first, the killing had to take place.

It had been easy to lure that idiotic coach down to the basement, a few drinks and the lie that he wanted to speak to him about Tyler's behaviour, the suggestion that he was a worried father afraid his son was on some sort of drug.

No matter how pissed he was at him, at his heart Will Tanner was a good man who cared about his players.

That was the mistake that cost him his life.

Richard had learned that when a man walked confidently enough, people would follow him, no matter what their gut instincts were telling them because they lived in a small town society where the pressure to be polite was close to overwhelming.

So, even though Coach Tanner had been mumbling about unnecessary theatrics, he had trudged down those stairs and into the small room that had been stripped of all its furniture.

It had taken a lot more effort to pull Tyler away from the celebrations but with enough threats and force, he'd managed to corral him into the semi-darkness; barking an order at him to wait.

Tanner had been visibly surprised when he'd spotted Tyler and demanded that Richard tell him what the hell was going on. Richard had ignored him, the pathetic little human, putting all his focus on his son.

"He wants to kick you off the team."

"He wants to make you an outcast."

"He wants to take everything from you."

"He thinks he's better than us but we're the goddamn Lockwood family."

"We built this town, and you're going to let some nobody take it from us?"

"You disgust me."

"Stop being weak!"

Tyler was still thinking as a human, he was still only using human strength, but the cry that ripped from his chest as he threw himself across the room was animalistic and the determination with which he drove his fist into Tanner's face was close to awe-inspiring.

Bones snapped, blood splattered across the walls and the floor, the smack of flesh as it was kicked and beaten, Tanner's guttural groans of pain and even more pathetic…his pleas for mercy.

"Tyler…stop…"

"Don't do this son…"

"You're not this person."

"Please…"

He stopped speaking once his teeth dropped from his mouth like bloody pearls.

It takes an impressive amount of time for Tyler to stop beating him, his chest heaving, sweat dripping down his face, his movements slowing as he falls back on his haunches. Tanner had curled up in a foetal position to try and protect himself, Tyler had dropped to his knees to reach him easier.

Richard strides across the room and claps his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"I'm proud of you, son." He states gruffly.

Tanner's not dead yet, Richard can still hear his heart beat but it's so slow at this point that the man has a minute or two left at most.

Unfortunately, Tyler chooses that moment to start panicking.

"No…" he gasps, "Oh My God, what have I done? Dad…I"

He lunges forward, rolling Tanner onto his back, putting his hands on his chest to perform CPR.

And he can't even do that right.

His ribs are long since shattered, one of them has perforated his lungs and with every press down of his hands, Tyler is pushing the blood from his body.

Richard waits impatiently for him to figure that out but when the pool of blood nearly touches his shoes, and risks staining the leather, he whacks him upside the head.

"Stop being an idiot," he demands, "You made it this far, don't pussy out on me now."

He'd hoped to knock some sense back into him, but the stupid boy begins to hyperventilate.

"I killed him…I killed him…I killed a person."

Rolling his eyes Richard checks his watch, it was just after ten pm and he could feel the pull of the change in his bones, in his blood rushing through his veins, in the tickling of his gums.

As the older wolf and the one who has changed every month for the last forty years, he assumes he'll be the first to feel the crack of his spine.

So when Tyler's foolish babbling is cut off by a scream of pain and he contorts backwards at an angle unnatural for humans, Richard is stunned.

And when it becomes clear that not only is Tyler experiencing his first full moon an hour early but actually transforming into a wolf, he feels a trickling of fear shoot up in spine and down in his bladder.

He knows it isn't possible.

There's no way his stupid, moron of a son could be turning on his first full moon, not when the blood hasn't even had a chance to dry on his hands.

But his eyes turn yellow and Richard has to consider a disgusting possibility.

That Tyler was a more powerful werewolf than him.

Even as he rushes from the room- not running like a coward but hurrying because he had places to be- he notes that he has to locate that damn moonstone as soon as possible.

Once the sun and moon ritual was done, they wouldn't have to change every month and Richard would always be the stronger werewolf, the better werewolf.

Over the centuries, Mikael had not just delighted in killing vampires but had taken special pleasure in killing werewolves.

Imagining each one to be the filthy dog that had seduced his wife and foisted his bastard on him.

Now, he once more catches the scent of wolf on the night air, nearly hidden within the stronger heady mixture of smoke, burning wood and bloodshed but still present

Perhaps he would kill this creature and make Niklaus eat its eyes before he slaughtered him once and for all.

But first, he would deal with the vampiress walking towards him without the respect and fear he deserved.

He turns around and has a moment of confusion, something he hasn't experienced in decades if not centuries.

"Tatia?"

And why was she dressed like a whore?

"Sorry," she simpered, "Wrong doppelganger, I'm Katherine…also, your daughter-in-law FYI."

His what?

"I had heard of the doppelgangers," he allows, flashing to her side and he notes how her heart beats rapidly in fear, but she doesn't so much as flinch.

She was brave at least.

"You know who I am then," he states, circling her, "And still you sought me out?"

"To make a deal," She explains, "One that will ensure you can remain on this side of the Veil long enough to kill your son, who's fled town by the way, fortunately…" she adds, interrupting his curse,

"I have the means to track him."

She was still a vampire. He would still have to kill her.

But she could spend her last hours on this Earth being useful.

He offers an approximation of a smile, "Lead the way."