A/N: I have a few notes to make on this, but to avoid spoilers I will refrain from pointing out a couple of things until the end of this update. Please do stop off and read the author's note at the end when you finish. It's nothing ominous, I just need to address a couple of things I mentioned in the author's notes of the previous part.

For a moment he just stands here feeling the snow in arctic tiptoes down his back, Tim warm against him, the soldiers bustling ahead of him, this entire night muffled in the strange silence that hangs itself on the moments between bullets.

"All right; quick decision time, mate. As everyone who is fortunate enough to have been exposed to me knows, I could fight off an entire battalion one-handed, sans both my feet. You, however, are not quite up to par at the moment, and we don't want anyone sneaking a bullet into you while I'm busy giving you a show to fuel all your fantasies for the next several nights. I could drop you here and go on ahead by myself to take care of this little blockade single-handedly, like the god that I am, leaving you potentially vulnerable to any minions wandering round. Or I could flash us both up the street right past them at approximately the speed of a very handsome jet- straight into the arms of whatever might be waiting up ahead for us. So," he says, and shrugs out of his jacket.

"What are you doing?" Tim asks, his question white against the sky.

"Tonight you'll be playing the role of that one friend who chooses to pay homage to his homosexual curiosity by getting drunk enough that he can pass off any slobbery groping as just one sip too many down the hatch. Just stare meaningfully at me and stagger a bit. You'll be just fine. Why aren't you wearing a jacket?" he asks, shoving one of Tim's arms through the sleeve of his pea coat, wrestling his hand through on the other side, adjusting the lapels artfully round his chin and closing the front round his bullet holes, the buttons sealing away his weeping stomach to give him back this air of choir boy respectability.

"Because I'm a vampire. Why are you wearing one?"

"Because it makes me look handsome." He pinches Tim's chin and gives him a smile. "Now just let your natural adoration for me come through, all right? They're not going to detain a couple of sloshed queers for long. Never know what they'll see. Try not to bleed all over my coat, darling. I'm sure it's a brand name. Elijah can tell you all about it later."

He hefts Tim's arm over his shoulder.

They test out a couple of awkward steps, until they have matched Tim's longer legs to his shorter own (the only shorter appendage, you can be assured), and then off up the road they set, Tim's stumbling much less feigned than he would prefer, his heart thunderous, the street foretelling their journey with a noisy sequence of puddles and ice, Tim's hand making a clutch for the collar of his shirt.

"You all right?" he asks, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

"Yeah," he replies shortly, but he's got that wet rattle of death in his throat, and what little his peripheral vision grants him is paler than the fine dust lying itself in a late Christmas beneath his boots.

"You're full of wood, and because it's not mine, it's not the fun kind. It's just poisoning you, is all."

"Thanks."

"Don't worry; we'll get it out. Let's just get past our friends here, spirit you over to The Quarter House, and have Dr. Mikaelson take a quick look at you. He's a proctologist, by the way."

"Don't make me laugh, you fucking caffler. I'll put my puke all over your shoes."

"I wouldn't; those are brand names too. Plus, I stole them from Elijah. I'm going to be flagellated long enough as it is, without returning them full of regurgitated Guinness." He shifts Tim's arm a little higher as he feels the boy begin to slip, slides his free arm round his waist, puts them both hip to hip, Tim's head beginning to cant itself down against his own.

The soldiers up ahead have begun to gain details, the smell of their guns sharp in his nose, the ground still crunching away beneath him, both their exhales smoking in the air.

"He all right?" one of the soldiers asks, shouldering his rifle and venturing a few steps beyond this hurdle of man and machine.

He puts a jittery edge into his voice.

Not much of a stretch for it, if you want to know a secret.

"He's just a bit drunk. We were at the Kerry, and we heard shots, or something, some screaming- I don't know what's going on, but can you please just let us through? I need to get my friend home."

"I'm going to need to see some ID."

"Right. Sure." He takes his arm from Tim's waist to fumble round in his pocket, putting himself wholeheartedly to the task of botching all his movements, his fingers shaking, his eyes giving that jumpy little blink of the newly sober, his breath nearly as rickety as Tim's.

"His too," the man prompts as he hands across his wallet at last and the soldier unfolds it with a snap to give a squint to his driver's license.

"Right. Wallet, mate?" He knocks his head gently against Tim's.

Tim slips his hand dutifully beneath the coat to dig round in his trouser pocket.

Their interrogator is joined by another, bleeding from the arm.

Tim freezes.

The man watches them both as he opens this gash a little wider with his knife, and now into the scent of snow and sky spills this fragrance that awakens his fangs.

It is not to instinct but to choice that nine hundred years of victims have seen themselves cast into the maw of death, and so with just a little steadying of his shoulders he dulls his nature on the edge of his will, but Tim- poor darling, barely a century underneath him, there is nothing of restraint in youth, it's the years that bring it round to heel, ask him not to repress what he is when he has only begun to coax it forth to the light.

But hold onto it anyway.

You see, he lost a witch.

It's one of those long stories to which the telling is relegated to 'someday', but the short of it is, darling, he lost a witch, it cut him off at the knees, he's got no more left in him.

Don't you do it to him too.

The clouds breathe a lungful of ice into the sky.

The bleeding soldier shuts his knife and stands eyeing them both, dripping onto the street.

Tim drops his head.

He digs his nails into the handful of collar he has got his fingers round.

There is a moment of noisy breath through the nostrils, the acceleration of Tim's heart in his chest, everything thumping round in them both, the boy's hunger, his terror, the soldiers looking on with interest, Tim's nails puncturing his collar to open little slits along his neck.

"I think he's going to hurl," he tells the soldiers helpfully, and then with a kidney blow from the hand he's got round the boy's back, he puts Tim on his knees with an acrid splash.

They step back to let him pour up his Guinness in noisy gouts.

"I'm sorry- he always does this. Can't hold it, don't drink it, I always tell him. You all right, darling?" he asks, bending over Tim to pat his hunched back. "None on the jacket now, there we are, darling."

"Just get him home. Stay indoors tonight," the first soldier tells him, handing back his wallet. "Do you understand? Don't be wandering around the streets. Stay put once you're inside."

"Absolutely. Come on, Timothy. Up we go." He hefts Tim onto his feet, wipes the boy's chin with his sleeve, slings his arm back over his shoulders.

They are out of ear shot when Tim vomits again.

It's a bit redder this time.

He sits down next to him to keep him company as he makes his obeisance on his hands and knees, to no porcelain god but merely a dirty street corner, everything which for the past twenty-four hours has called his stomach home redistributing itself onto the pavement.

"That blonde doesn't look nearly as tasty coming up as she did going down."

Tim shuts his eyes, a little huff that might be a laugh opening his lips.

"Up you go again," he says firmly, but he's gentle when he grips Tim beneath the armpits and he reassembles his feet beneath him.

"Kol. I think we need to stop," Tim tells him roughly.

"We need to get off the street. It's just a bit farther to The Quarter House. You can make it. Can't you?"

The sky fires another volley of hail.

He slides his hand round Tim's cheek, to give the boy something to lean into, and when he does, they both drop their foreheads forward, to hold up the other with this touch of warm skin, soft hair, his other hand coming round to very gently feel that little kick of hair just beneath the cap, and isn't it funny, that sometimes the softest touch is not mother's but monster's?

They share a breath.

"Have you got it?" he asks Tim as his knees straighten just a bit.

"I'm grand," Tim says, and he's even got a smidge of a smile for him, when he presses the boy's cap down and he ruffles it round just enough to tousle his hair.

Tim takes his last step just a few feet from The Quarter House.

He stops the collapse halfway to the street, jostles Tim face up in his arms, and then a stride and he is boot sole to door handle, startling a scream from the woman behind the front desk, the staff leaping forward to restrain him as he lays Tim right on their pretty floor, the boy black to the chin with blood, and straddles his hips.

"Get on the doors!" he snaps, reaching back to effortlessly break one of the hands that closes over his shoulder. "Marcel just sent a little murder squad up and down Decatur killing Nik's- Klaus' people, so put yourselves to better use keeping an eye on the street, while I see to my friend here."

He opens the pea coat with a jerk of his hands, scattering buttons.

Tim coughs up another clot.

"I said get on the doors. Tell me if anyone's coming. Or I'll murder your whole families." He smiles as much as he is able.

He rips Tim's shirt down the middle.

There is a hot spray against his face, the struggling of Tim's heart in his ears, the lungs full of fluid, bits of organ on his lips, a touch of death already in his cheeks, and then with his fingers to the boy's sternum, he digs all the way down through skin, to bone, and cracks him wide.

Tim arches up with a scream.

He yanks the cap down from his head to stuff it between his lips.

There is another moment of thrashing consciousness, his eyes rolling, both his legs twitching as he digs in for some sort of purchase with heels that skid on the tiles, the cap barely muffling his pain, his neck muscles cording, his fingers snapping themselves against flooring that does not give way before his bones, and then a squelch and a spurt and down into sleep sags Tim as down tunnel his fingers into the mess of his chest, to extract the fragment of bullet right alongside his heart.

He shoves his hand in to the wrist, to snag another three pieces just to the left of this most dangerous sliver, peels back the ribs a little more to bare the lungs, to twist his hand just a bit deeper into this mangled pink, where lies somewhere that bit of bullet that sent his lungs so colorfully to his lips.

"You little shit," he snaps, and he straightens with the final piece in his hand, to peg it off Tim's head hard enough to open his scalp line with a gush. "You might have mentioned one of the pieces was that close to your fucking heart."

He lifts one shaky hand to paint a jagged streak across his forehead.

It's all right, though.

His hands wet with your blood, his throat hot with something else, trembling in his fingers, pain in his heart- he's come through all this before, darling, he knows through what a man must wade to reach his far years.

He just had his feet stick a bit recently, you know?

Listen.

He doesn't want to bore you.

His story's never been the interesting one. No one tries to cut short the quest of the protagonist, isn't that right?

He just-

He curls his hand into a fist, touches it to his mouth, unfurls it into a palm, streaks one bloody thumb print along the boy's cheek.

He's tired of staying behind.

That's all.

That's his story.

"There's soldiers coming," someone blurts out from the front door.

He takes the hat gently from Tim's slack lips, and slips it back down onto his head, giving his cheek one more red caress with his thumb.

"Then keep them busy down here. And clean all this blood up," he says, pulling Tim's deadweight up into his arms as the wound in his chest begins to knit itself together.

He ducks under Tim's arm and tosses the boy over his shoulder. "I'm going to take him upstairs to one of the rooms. Now, I don't have time to compel all of you, but I suggest you keep this between you and I anyway. Almost a century of lying in a coffin has let up on my reputation a bit, so in case anyone needs a quick refresher, my name is Kol Mikaelson. I like long walks on the beach and setting people on fire. I'd love to eviscerate your children sometime."

He smiles.

He holds one hand gently against Tim's head to keep his hat in place.

There are quite a lot of slack jaws, when he mounts the first of the steps and begins his half second ascension to the second floor.

It's quite nice, actually.

He's missed that, you know?

He heaves Tim across the bed of the first third floor room he wanders into at random and shuts the door behind him.

Up go the window blinds, to give him one quick glimpse of this street full of snow and pedestrians out to thumb their noses at curfew, and then a flick of his wrist and he snaps them down once more.

He listens to the footsteps in the lobby, to all the little noises of weapon on cloth, of heartbeat put nervously to sternum bone, these little movements of throat and tongue and nerves with their salt gushes, all these counters by which time ticks, winding its way round to your bed of ash and worm.

Someone fires off a shot of laughter in the street below.

He ticks one of the blind's slats with his finger, lifts it for a moment, lets it fall.

A glance shows him Tim's healing chest, his ruined pea coat (no dry cleaner to touch that in all the city- looks like he butchered a bloody cow in it; Elijah will have his liver, but luckily he grows that back as he grows back everything save his heart), the concave lung slowly inflating itself, the good giving him a brief wet show of its tedious work as the ribs brick over it once more, the boy's cheeks one inch at a time regaining their tint.

A boot mounts the first step.

He cracks his neck.

The rasp of a safety put forward is quite a noisy thing.

He doesn't really remember that. No safety but your own common sense on the weapons with which he warred; he did not long survive the era of musket and ball, after all, and Nik might at least have treated him to one of those Lee-Enfields of the Great War whose trenches he never did get to breach-

The boot is joined by a whole troop of them, up the first step and onto the creaky second, the third tread more carefully, the fourth giving out scarcely a whisper, the silence of his own room louder than the din of theirs-

He rolls up his sleeves.

Got to give your hands something to do, when they've numbed themselves with this shot of adrenaline that leaves its taste of steel on the tongue.

He looks back over his shoulder to the bed.

The wait's the thing, darling.

Stretch itself out old as him, then comes the actual moment, over in a blink, your hands a bit redder for it, but none the change otherwise, if you're like him, with your years piled thick as the bodies steaming round you.

Another look, another twitch of his sleeve, the footsteps wandering on, the scent of guns closing in as they did from the rifle pits of Little Big Horn, gradually, nosing their way as one feels his path across a cold floor-

Tim regains his consciousness before his health.

His eyelids slither noisily, his lung in self-repair gives a flutter as his lips open for breath, the hand limp over the side of the bed twitches itself onto the covers.

He turns with his finger to his mouth.

Ireland had its years of stealth and skulk, so put yourself back in those Dublin streets with their Irish spies and British counter-spies and all amount of bloody tiptoeing round the bombs beneath coats, and not so much as a fucking twitch out of you, darling.

He ticks his eyes to the window.

Tim over the sill, bit worse for the fall, especially in that state, but the landing ought break only a couple of things while he dispenses of their admirers, then out over the ledge himself, haul the boy up by the collar, walk him out from beneath the distrustful eyes-

The boots touch on the carpet a few feet down the hall.

He eases up the blinds, puts his strength to jiggling the window open one silent inch at a time.

Lapel of the pea coat -going to owe him for this one, Timmy; you think he inflates his brother's reaction to a bit of ruined Armani?- steady the boy on his feet, sit him down hard on the ledge, one hand to his chest-

"Fuck me!" he blurts with all the vehemence he can put into his smallest whisper.

They've stopped a bloody truck in the middle of the street to disgorge another unit, which sets to work with their own blockades, two of them mounting the sidewalk to wave the pedestrians back to their homes, their rifles collecting snow, helmets shiny with the moon.

Tim's heart gives an agitated gurgle and reforms the bit he took when he saved it from that bullet, and the boy hunches forward with the pain of it, holding in his vomit, his hands shaking on his knees.

They listen to the boots in the hall make their sweep of the floor, to the ones in the street take their positions on the corners, and which heart strains more against its chest, his or Tim's, he couldn't bloody tell you.

He's not sure how long they are frozen like this, his fingers still feeling Tim's mending chest, Tim's hand creeping from his own knee to Kol's, to vise round the cap until with a crack it crumbles, the boy breathing through his pain, reeking of the bile he keeps dammed behind his lips, both of them with their ears cocked to nothing that isn't the creeping of those feet just beyond, his religion resurfacing for that one emergent moment in which all man needs God-

The boots reverse themselves.

They crowd the stairs.

Tim lets up on his knee.

He waits for the boots to touch down on the ground floor, and then he leans forward to spit out this mouthful of bile, choking on it until one of his retches conjures up a second wave of Guinness and human.

"Coat and the shoes- I'm afraid I'm going to have to take that out in flesh, darling. I'm going to need it for myself, to repair whatever it is Elijah decides to do."

"Sorry," Tim gasps, sliding down off the sill to finish up his healing on his hands and knees.

He yanks the window shut, and he thought all the tenderness went out of him when the confrontation between his instinct and some woman with Mother's face ended in a strained belly, but there are soft spots yet, because he kneels down beside the boy and he slides a hand over his shoulders, to add what comfort he can to this final moment of agony.

Tim leans back against the wall, his chest shut at last, and tilts his hat down into his eyes.

He smiles and cuffs the brim.

They sit in silence for a moment, listening to the soldiers outside the window, to the volleys of ice against the hotel, to the scurrying of the employees in the lobby.

"You want to move out now?" Tim asks tiredly.

"No; we'll bunk down here for the night. Might as well keep right under their noses, where they won't think to look twice. They'll probably be shutting down several streets round Decatur, to try and keep everything contained while they hunt out the troublemakers. So unless you want me to keep kidney punching you through all the checkpoints, I think we should stay put for a bit."

Tim looks down at his hands. "I snuck my way through quite a lot of those on me own in Ireland. Except they just thought I was a Mick, when they caught me out."

"Which do you think was worse to the English, a monster or an Irishman?"

The boy gives a little smile. "No difference between them, according to the peelers. A trophy for the head of either."

Spent much of your life as an animal, haven't you?

It's not much different than the average man, who will commit any sin for his bread, who forgets what little worth holds the life of his friend, when the guns open their mouths with a roar, but to have your nose put to it and ground down into the grit- that's a bit of a jab, isn't it?

Is that what your first century taught you? That you are some accolades to be mounted on a wall? That whatever preach the posters with their motivational spiels, what's inside counts only so far as it can be strung round a trophy case?

He knocks his chin against Tim's bowed head.

"I'd pay a lot for your head," he says, leaving his chin on the boy's hat. "But I wouldn't put it on my wall. And I'd keep it attached."

"And put it facedown in your lap, I know," Tim replies with a smile in his voice.

"Did I say that, you presumptuous little shit?"

Tim's head tilts just enough for the boy to shoot him a peripheral smirk.

He returns it more softly. "Missed me, didn't you?"

You won't know how much hope he hides in that.

Once he was dead, it didn't matter, for who had a witch to tell that sometimes monsters are only boys who want their brothers, but life is a wriggly thing like that, you actually have to live.

There will come a tomorrow that might perhaps swallow you whole.

There will be a death, two three, a thousand, all of them save yours, darling, and through these days and these deaths you must soldier, and what have you got to keep the smile tacked in place but a bit of denial?

"Every day, pulse of my heart," Tim tells him with a bat of his lashes, and then he laughs, and he breaks into this smile, teasing at first, then softening round the edges, until it's lost almost all of its luster, and put it instead into his eyes. "I stayed round the church for a week. I mean, I left, the first time about two hours in, because I was too afraid to just sit round in there any longer, but you weren't at the house, or the Monteleone, the pub, anyplace else I could think to check- so I went back. Slept there. Found Jesus again for a little while, because you always do, when you need him most, atheist or serial killer or fuckin'…couch-jumping scientologist." He laughs.

It's not a very funny laugh.

"And then someone said…someone said you were gone, so I went. Had me first century with everyone except you. Forgot that you can't befriend humans, because what British bullets you shrug off they lie down with forever. Tried the permanent bastards, but you know how they went too. Everything except me- that was right. You were right."

"That was very poetic."

Tim smiles and rubs his face. "Me mother fucked Yeats. Who knows but he might have been me Da, instead of some scut kicking dirt in England's eyes."

"Did she really?"

Tim's laugh is choked, he has to clear his throat, to swipe a quick arm across his eyes, to cough himself back to clarity. "No. Except on days when Mrs. Connolly was too fuckin' up her own ass for my mother's patience, met Mr. Shaw himself in one of London's fine, fine drawing rooms, oh and Wilde- rubbed elbows with him too, blah blah blah. That was before he was a sodomist, of course, deserved his fall wouldn't you say, sin like that, horrible what men are coming to these days, why not ship them all off to the army where they'll beat the buggery right out of them."

He turns his head to laugh with his cheek to Tim's cap. "Close quarter lodgings with muscular young men starved of their women- that's cured many a homosexual."

"The cure is in the cock," Tim says, and then he bursts out in a laugh verging on his drunken giggle, his entire body shaking with it.

"Timothy Patrick. What would your mother say?"

"To take to me rosary until my fingers blister with the chafe of it."

"I doubt rubbing a long string of balls is the answer."

"Never know until you try."

"And how many have you been rubbing, young man?"

"Does a girl kiss and tell, Mikaelson?"

He tips Tim's head back by the hair at the nape of his neck and for a moment he looks down at him with a smile he feels all through his cheeks, and he lets loose his grip on this kick of hair beneath the hat and strokes it instead, and with that smile of his own the boy gets off a shot or a stab or something that sticks in his chest, anyway, and you'll notice, when you let yourself live, how simultaneously this hurts and heals.

So he broke himself on the witch and he'll break himself on you, and it'll sting, worse than that, darling, if you'll recall the little impromptu surgeon's routine he performed on your ailing chest, but what's the alternative?

No, really.

He wants to know.

Tim is still smiling at him when he leans down and plants a noisy kiss on the bridge of his nose, ruffling his hair.

It's funny, the quiet.

She woke in a quiet like this.

She was dead, you see.

You wouldn't know it to look at her now, to watch her cock her head to each new sensation, smell, sight, sound, there is a whole other world layered beneath this surface stratum of distant traffic, muted voices, far-off bakeries with their vents letting off bread steam and pastry cinnamon, but you wouldn't know that either, she didn't, she felt it carefully out with her fingertips perceptive of everything and her pupils blown wide to the light, but there's this moment, and it comes before.

Mommy, she remembers thinking in this moment.

Mommy, I'm sorry.

She wasn't unselfish.

She was seventeen.

But when you bow your head to the stone and you toss your final handful and up to whatever exists in that sky above wings whichever prayer you have blown out in a spray of messy grief, it's not for them.

It's the leaving that's the easy part, Mommy, so to the left behind she makes her amends, because she died on an in-between year, it wasn't fair, she had so much more to do, but what teenaged accomplishment does not pale beside Elizabeth Anne Forbes in a heap on her little girl's bed with her nose pressed to the last bit of scent to which a pillow can cling?

But it doesn't last, this quiet.

She notices the sounds of death first.

She always does.

The final gurgles of a throat fighting its way back to what she finds so easily darts her tongue out across her lips and deepens the pit in her gut, and what mid-evening snack she last consumed has long lost its swell in her belly, and into this perfume of death, hot urine, leaking bowel, dripping blood, elongate her fangs, tingling against her lips.

Please don't tell her mother.

The sky touches a few tentative white fingers to her face through the broken window.

The woman beside her lifts a hand to the piece of glass in her throat.

She gushes a red plea down her chin.

Somewhere in the street beyond the broken truck spills its death in white clouds from the buckled hood.

A piece of hail bursts on the roof of the car like a bomb.

"Rebekah?" she whispers.

In the corner of the car, she smells someone die, shitting their way from one life to the next.

Five pairs of footsteps hit the pavement running.

What is left of the woman with the glass in her throat fights all the way down into this submission to which all humans will eventually kneel, her damp coughs breaking on her lips, her lashes full of snow, one final seizure of her willpower spurting urine down her legs, her sweat putrid, her fear nearly tangible, and God she smells so good-

The mangled car door comes away in someone's hand with a screech.

Always know she put up a fight.

When the first of them cleared the tangle of bodies near the front, gun in one hand, the other extended to seize her by the hair, to yank her up by the scalp, she thought of how scared you were to love her, that she never told you sorry, spat out of her system, now pants off, hands behind your head, and she bit him in the wrist, punched his knee, thrashed all the way up into his arms.

They bashed her head on the street, drug her halfway down the road by her curls, stomped both her legs, snapped one of her arms, but she got her nails into an eye anyway, they will not forget she was here, to her one final surge of rage the man with the gun sacrificed his testicles, and it wasn't enough, but she tried.

She always did, remember?

It's the shots that jolt her from her impermanent death.

She shakes off the bodies heaped over her in an instant, gains her feet, takes her painted red nails to the messy union of truck hood and car side, peels open this siding of steel and wood like paper come loose in her fingers, touches her one brief landing to the roof of the truck, flashes down into the snow-slick street without missing a beat.

They all drop their fangs, come at her with whatever weapon they've got to gain themselves a bit of an advantage over this thousand-year-old bitch who was eating lords before your mother rapped your first burp from your back, and without breaking her stride, sauce in her hips, flip to her hair, she backhands the first onto his knees, tears off his head, swings it by the hair into the face of his friend. The blow carries him off his feet, onto his back, and heel to the throat, hand to the chest, they're always so slippery inside, she just hates how her nails come out all ragged, caught up on the snags of sternum and rib-

The third fires point blank into her chest.

She snatches gun, hand, whatever, who cares with what she comes away, he's only an assemblage of pieces, and she puts his last bullet straight into his chest, breaks the jaw of the friend who lunges to his aid with the butt of this firearm she uppercuts into his face, back kicks the testicles of the fifth as he blurs for her back.

She matches the rest of his face to his jaw, isn't that coordinated of her, stoves in with a blow from her heel forehead, cheeks, nose, works her way down to his chest, punches his heart loose from his sternum.

She drops it on his mangled face.

The last is still clutching himself.

She smiles as she clicks her way toward him.

Silly peasants.

Murder is for ladies.

He finishes his life facedown on his ugly stump of a nose, his blood trailing away underneath him, all the way to the foot of the girl with her face smeared, her curls half-missing, her eyes open.

The worst part, she thinks, is the hat.

The stupid ridiculous bloody thing with its bit of fluff at the top all in shreds where it belongs, strewn out along the road beside Caroline's curls, cap nearly as red as girl, and the poor tattered face- it had such a nice smile, you know, lit up the whole stupid room, don't ever bloody tell the little harlot with her hands full of brothers that do not belong to her, but- she liked it.

She likes it.

Don't tell her she's got to apply her past tense in place of the present, because you've got your eyes open, they've slid down just a touch, up once more they go, and beneath chest of bullet and blood your lungs take in a mouthful of January and your eyes shutter themselves closed, fling themselves open to this evening of brittle gray moon and sputtering black clouds, your foot twitches, your hand follows course, the chest knocks back another drink of frost, so everything will be all right.

That's what you always say.

That's what you always say, Caroline, please.

"He had the wrong bullets in his gun," Caroline Forbes rasps from her invalid's hunch, angling her broken face up into the falling snow. "They're not wood."

She nods with her lips pressed together.

"I thought I was going to die," the girl says, and then her broken face fractures further still, and she starts to cry, her arms too damaged to lift her hands in support of her face, and somehow she's on her knees next to this pile of bone and blood, and she has her chin on top of the thinned curls and her arms round the shattered shoulders, and as if Caroline weren't crying enough for the both of them, she opens herself like a bloody faucet all over the girl's head.

Rebekah sweeps in through the door with Caroline on her arm and snow in her hair.

He could smell them halfway down the block, clothed as they are in blood, the reek hardly diminished by this cannonade of winter that makes itself known at the windows and across the roof, and over the side of the chair he drops his sketchpad, his charcoal writing itself a messy doodle across the cover as it rolls for the carpet.

"What the hell happened to you?" he demands, and no sooner has he taken to his feet than Caroline leaps right up into his arms, arms round his neck, lips on his own.

He holds her by the waist as she takes his mouth in some great fever of need, kisses his cheek, his neck, the crook of his shoulder, buries her face there to just breathe against the skin she has nudged down the collar of his shirt to find.

He meets Rebekah's eyes over Caroline's head, easing her down onto her toes.

His sister holds his gaze regally with her red-rimmed eyes. "We had a small run-in with some werewolves, that's all, Nik."

"With wolves," he says, and at this Caroline looks up, back over her shoulder to his sister, who flutters her lashes just slightly but keeps her chin loftily tilted and her hands in her jacket pockets.

"Right," Caroline agrees, and she takes his cheeks in her hands and she kisses him with such earnestness he feels all the tension drain itself from his shoulders. "Wolves." She kisses him again, just a peck this time, but she does not let go his cheeks, she strokes her thumbs back along the bones, all the way to his ears and down along his jaw line.

"We took care of it," Bekah adds. "I don't think they'll be bothering us at all again."

With hair curled, lips glossed, lashes curled, she sets off to the Hotel Mazarin on a morning nearly as pretty as she.

She opens the front doors unchallenged.

Perhaps it's the bat in her hand.

Kol will never miss it; he's only a bloody thousand of the things, all stacked round like those pocket watches of Nik's, crowding their tarnished faces round the room that should well have gone to her antique looking glasses, if the dolts had any eye for class.

She snaps it between her hands.

Actually, he will miss it.

It's his favorite.

That's the whole point.

You see, dear brother, you can make your moony cow eyes at her, poor Kol the left behind, a spit rather than a squall squeezed from the eyes of sisters who ought to have gone to bended knee for their grief over an asshat and his stake, but she hasn't broken nearly enough of your prized possessions to yet spare herself a care.

"Rebekah," Marcel says with a smile that brightens his whole face, and she jerks the first of the bodyguards flanking him onto the floor, spurts his eye halfway up her calf with a stomp of her heel, pins him there screaming his bloody head off as she thrusts Kol's bat through the chest of the remaining guard.

She keeps her eyes on Marcel's as she slips her heel slowly free of the socket, and stabs down with the second half of her weapon so hard she cuts the man's head free of his neck.

She feels the warm gush of his death all round her feet.

She smiles.

Marcel steeples his fingers, his throat working. "Take it Caroline Forbes is a friend of yours?"

"No," she snaps. "But she was wearing my shirt when you had her shot."

She jerks him to his feet by the collar of his shirt. "Now why don't you show me round the hotel, Marcel? I want to meet all your favorites. You're very hungry, and they're very tasty."

Nik storms into her room not three hours later, and she casually flips a page of the magazine she is reading.

"You and Caroline were attacked by wolves."

"Isn't that what we said last night?" she asks, wetting her finger.

She turns another page.

"So last night, a dozen of my informants were murdered, Caroline herself very nearly among them, because werewolves were angry with the recent glut of hits Marcel has taken to his people, courtesy of my assassins. And this afternoon, I hear tale of a disturbance at the Hotel Mazarin perpetrated by an irate, well-dressed blonde."

She looks up with an arch of her eyebrow. "Maybe you should put a leash on her, Nik. But at least she took the time to dress up. Just because you've got to get your hands a bit dirty is no reason not to look pretty while doing it. I like to think I taught her that."

"Rebekah."

She flips the magazine shut. "You caught me. I lied. I just wanted to get there first."

"And who gave you permission?" Nik thunders, his cheeks going that particularly lively shade of red that she does so adore putting in his face.

She smiles.

She crosses her legs. "Let's see, Nik, I'm an individual perfectly capable of governing myself and my own decisions, so- me. If you have a problem with that, then why don't you run along, borrow your testicles from Caroline, and then come back and tell me what you think of that?"

"I suppose your coffin is looking particularly inviting to you lately, hmm?"

"The Mikaelsons reunited once more, and you want to start sticking them back in boxes. Isn't that typical," she spits. "You want your bloody unity only so long as it goes your own way and we follow your every little whim. How pleased Kol must be to have returned to you."

Nik is silent for several long moments, and though he thinks he keeps his face schooled so well, her big brother with his expressions that give away everything, she can see each little mark she has cut into him with her words.

You think she likes to watch her lash land, to see all her little insults grow themselves a cover of old white, until you can pick them away like they mean nothing, Nik?

She just wanted the same brother who sat vigil against her nightmares.

That's all, Nik.

She never thought it was too much to ask.

"Where is Kol?" he asks more quietly.

"How the hell should I know?" she snaps. "I haven't talked to him since he came back."

"He didn't come home last night. One of the members of my hit team is missing as well."

"The quiet Irish one whose eyes Caroline's going to spit on her nails one day?"

"Tim. Yes."

"Didn't he and Kol paint the town homosexual our first time round this city?" she asks carelessly, leaning back on her hands and swinging her legs in front of her, letting them thump gently back against the bed with each thrust of her knees. "They're probably holed up somewhere getting to know each other again. He's been dead a year. It's been a while, Nik."

"Or else Tim was one of last night's victims, and now our dear brother is gearing himself up for another spree like the one he inflicted on the French Quarter mere days after stepping out from the curtain for his encore."

"And what bothers you more? Kol's battered heart, or your ruined plans?"

Nik's jaw tenses.

He stares at her for a very long moment. "We haven't finished this discussion," he says darkly, and then he turns on his heel and slips down the hall in a blink.

Tim lies buried in his slumber right up till noon, but he's no clock round his neck like a noose, so what harm in letting him sigh out his dreams in a safe bed, his hand twitching over the side.

He puts his hands behind his neck, waggling his toes in his socks where they lie level with Tim's head, the sun warm on the blinds and the mild day coming round to bake away the snow, the death of it echoing on the sidewalks far below.

Tim conked himself out quite soon after their talk ended in a midnight full of silence, but he's spent much of this nighttime cease fire just precisely like this, head to toe with the boy, the frail start and stop of Tim's breathing knocking his heart round his chest, the moon and then sun nipping in through the blinds to take their rays like charcoal to his cheeks.

So he came through a war, two, three, 37,230 of them, to be exact, because that's what each day makes of itself, that first turbulent century with the knowledge of forever still a little infant thing inside your breast, and he's not a mark for it physically, because didn't he tell you, Tim O'Sullivan, that you'll never believe it, not with your friends falling dead all round you, popping out their babies and oiling up their old joints with some pint of froth and anesthesia, but you'll never change again, with time on bended knee before you.

There must be a whole different weight on the shoulders of men who have asked for it.

There must be a whole new species of mold growing in patchy on the soul, eating away with the mouths of third-world starved.

Nik promised his day of justified vengeance to a boy practically new from the thighs, he was that young, and what man still numb with his grief would weight the scales of his heart with careful consideration, to the one side endless youth, unblemished beauty, knowledge never-ending, to the other the specter of this nice young lad from Kerry going pale round the edges with his bloodlust and his boredom.

You will blunt your grief on your sleeve over that, because into what millstone has this poor boy been cast, with his guileless smile and his nose full of freckles, and his lashes nearly long as a girl's, and the cap he carried through six countries, 102 years, the right side patched against the bullet that tried at last to carry it from his head, the left with the blood of some boy who held over his own youth Ireland's emancipation, but has he not fallen under the pall of age just like all other man?

What boy keeps his rosy inexperience with a government at his back, nudging him forward into trenches of shit and snow? What girl preserves in her heart that kernel of ponytails tied up with string when she is mounted for her first time, and instead of poetry and starlight she is for thirty damp seconds robbed of her dignity and her sanctity?

Is this tragedy or inevitability?

You know, he doesn't know.

Isn't that funny?

Tim skulked round in a hotel with his mouth full of 'yes sir' and his pockets brimming with the pity of the more fortunate, who take it upon their consciences to do unto others as they'd never want done unto them (charity is for the unwashed, you know), and then, wouldn't you know it, such a tragedy, he was a very nice boy, this thing whose mouth replaced professionalism with the lives and cocks of his fellow man, the both of them equally warm.

And if this is the doing of his brother or the march of that inevitable death thing the humans for some reason call 'progress', half a million folded into the earth for the whims of papers-pushers from opposing nations, half a million more turned mad by their teeth full of blood and their toes black with December, he couldn't tell you.

He thinks it's probably a shame.

He thinks it's all probably a shame, the whole lot of them, man, monster, blundering their way round punching holes in one another.

But.

He wouldn't know about that anymore.

Probably he once kissed his mother on the cheek and he cleaned the blood of Mikael's vitriol from Nik's face just to get the ache out of their eyes.

Probably.

He watches the boy in his jumble of blankets and sheets, his bare back subtly moving, his suspenders limp over his hips, his fine hair like ash down round his ears.

There was a boy who nursed gods close to his heart and another who lost his Da to English fidelity and neither the one of them was particularly bad, no more than the next boy, but time took care of that, it always does, you'll note, and so here they lie head to toe, breathing the inhalations that should perhaps have gone to better men, probably just shells of themselves, but who can remember that far back anyway.

He rolls himself off the bed.

Tim doesn't stir.

Everything up and moving beyond the blinds, the world with its arms in a great stretch to shake off this white rust of winter's evening, the blockades still up, the soldiers moving about among shoppers with their nerves all knotted up in their shoulders.

He hears a sigh bordering on consciousness filter through Tim's nose.

He blurs round to the right of the bed and flops himself down into this tangle of covers, crushing the hat a thrashing sleeper has at some point jostled down off the headboard.

He presses his nose to Tim's.

There is another twitch of that hand over the side of the bed, a stirring in one of the legs, a flicker of lash, another breath through the nose-

"Hello," he says.

"Jesus Christ!" Tim blurts, giving such a jerk he nearly tumbles himself right over the side of the bed.

"Did you know the king of hearts is the only king without a moustache on a standard playing card?"

"What?"

"Well, there's this thing some men get -you wouldn't know about it- that grows in right under their nose, because you see, Timmy, when a man's testicular region descends, he starts to become a real boy, complete with erections that don't even necessarily pertain to my naked body, and something known as facial hair. It's quite prickly, you can save your soup in it, it makes oral sex rather tickly."

"Shut up, you shit," Tim says with one arm across his eyes, his voice strained with laughter.

"I'm going to pop round your old hotel and pick up your things, just in case some enthusiastic minion is still hanging round waiting to put another bullet in you. You at least need a clean shirt before we venture out."

Tim follows him out of bed, giving his hair a good ruffle, the muscles in his stomach shifting round beneath the skin, a hip bone nudging out its peak as his trousers slip low on his waist, suspenders still dangling.

He leans in just a bit and hooks a finger just behind the top button of Tim's trousers, right up against the skin, and playfully jiggles the waistband.

You can time his flushes by the tick of your watch, the red mortification of this fair Irish boy.

"Anything particular you want me to pinch? Weapons? Clothing? Sex toys?"

"There's a .38 in the top drawer of the stand next to the bed. And one under each pillow. Oh, and me .45, underneath the mattress. A couple of tubes of gelignite under the toilet's sink…little .22 in the cushions of the couch out in the living room, and pick up me bible, would you?"

He lifts an eyebrow. "Darling, don't you think it's a bit late to turn your eye to Jesus? His forgiveness is quite stretchy, but you studied under me and Nik both, if you remember." He flicks his tongue suggestively and lets his smile go a bit wicked.

"I cut out the middle of it; it's got a little snub-nosed .38 in it." He scratches the back of his neck and hooks a thumb awkwardly in the right pocket of his trousers. "Don't look at me like that- no one stops to pester a priest with the good book under his arm. Got round most of Ireland that way, in 1919."

"Oh, I'm not judging you, darling. I'm just picturing it. I think I'm into it."

"In a roleplay sort of way?"

"I'll be the innocent choir boy who's shown the error of his heterosexual ways by the experienced older man with a tongue as talented as mine."

"I think that's a bit backwards."

He puts his hands in his pockets and tips himself forward. "Do you? I seem to remember you already being a bit sullied by the time I got my hands on you. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that you besmirched me, darling. I went into that confessional booth to acknowledge my sins and to ask forgiveness."

Tim gives a little laugh, lifting his eyebrows, his thumb hooking now in the waistband of his trousers, pulling them down just a bit more, to show off that tuft of brown just round his navel, and on any other pretty young thing freshly disheveled from the bed he'd say it was purposeful, a bit of peekaboo to jolt these hormones never far from the surface, but Tim hasn't got the slyness for that, if it's your cock he's after he'll fumble nervously round with your belt till a long kiss shuts off the anxiety in his hands and the insecurity in his eyes, and then down onto the bed you go, with his tongue in your mouth and his teeth at your neck, and if ever you've the curiosity for the unflagging Irish spirit of which long strife whispers, wrestle yourself one of these rebellious Celtic lads into bed and pin him down by the neck.

England learned its lesson quite the hard way, but his was rather enjoyable, if he says so himself.

"All right, I'm off. Don't get yourself shot while I'm gone. You want everything still in one piece," he says, and then he drops to his knees, and with both his hands on Tim's hips, he runs his tongue up from the waistband of those trousers to the hard knots of his lower abdominals.

He stands to put his lips to Tim's ear, tilting his hips forward so that they are flush against one another for just a moment. "All of it," he says, and then he nips playfully at Tim's neck with his human teeth, and he adds just a flick of his tongue, and there's that long shiver, all the way down the neck through the spine, right to his bare little toes.

He leaves Tim just as red as the day his mother spat him out from between her thighs.

He didn't kiss him good-bye, you'll notice.

Of course the thought occurred, a harlot like himself, put his tongue on anything (not anything, he has standards, it's not for coincidence that his men and his ladies are equally pretty), but he can't bed and shed this boy of the crinkly smile and the hands that soothed what Nik stung, and that quite kinks a strumpet's style.

And oh, Bonnie.

Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie.

She was very brave, little Bonnie Bennett, but then she is only a sapling, isn't she.

You have your cowardice drummed into you by the years, which forgive not a man his sacrifices, karma has not got your back, where has it been written, he often imagines the great Lady Universe demanding, that a man is owed his recompense for a good turn, and so pull in your heart a bit, darling, you don't want it chopped off by this great swinging mallet of Time, crushing all to powder.

So what you do, is you leave behind a witch braver than you who stood before French guns and laughed at an emperor's swords, because if her love is shaky at best, at least you have got the affection of a brother who cried himself to sleep beside your corpse. Perhaps Nik expresses his fondness like a jackass, perhaps Father hunted from him every kind of softness that is expected of these modern men who are to wear their exteriors hard and their hearts like marsh, but Nik wanted him back, and maybe Bonnie never wanted him at all, and you'll say he should be over it, an old man like him, who ought well to know that time runs out, love runs out, but he wanted more than a flicker of a smile not quite convinced his charms outweighed his vices.

So he ran.

It's what his family does best.

He left her to Mikael, to death, to eighteen pitiful years that are not even a handful of time's capabilities, and for that does he deserve a good-bye kiss from a pretty Irish boy like they are husbands parting for the day?

He thinks about that quite a lot.

He'll probably always think about that quite a lot.

The streets are quite lively, this time of the afternoon, everyone having their jostle for the corners that afford the best views of this new novelty of stone-faced soldier and molten-sided truck, glistening in the sun, and so he gets his shoulders bumped a few times, an elbow in his side, a careless hand on his ass (not to worry about the last, darling, the perpetrator is brunette, perhaps twenty-five, breasts out to here and legs up to there), but none so rough a handling as the one he gets from the blonde on her way up the street in the opposite direction, her designer heels ticking on the sidewalk.

"Oh- is there a fourth surviving member of the Mikaelson family? I wasn't aware," he calls out, and with a sudden squaring of her shoulders, Bekah stops, and she spins round.

She eyes him up and down, and she always did have that gaze to chop you down a good foot and a half, his sister.

The better to step on you.

"Kol."

"That is my name. Thank you for remembering."

She crosses her arms. "Well I tried to put it out of my head, but everything about you is like a gnat, dear brother."

"Well, not everything, Bekah," he says very solemnly. "My cock is actually much closer to a python. You can ask that one boyfriend of yours- what was his name again? I can't remember; it was sort of muffled by the pillow he put his face into, to stifle all his moans."

"And what was the name of that one little tramp you were crowing about to Nik? The one who spent a night with you and, realizing her mistake, turned right round and carried on a lurid, eight month affair with me?"

"'Imaginary', I think."

"You mean, like your little pocket python?" she snaps.

He smiles. "Nice to flick sword tips with you again, Bekah. I've missed your holier-than-peasant attitude."

"You can go flick your sword tip somewhere else, you ass. Or is that what you're just returning from? Nik says you're running round with that little Irish..thing again. What's it got to offer that your own family doesn't?"

"Bekah, just because he's prettier than you is no reason to be petty about your pronouns."

She stares at him for a moment, very icily, both perfectly-plucked eyebrows giving off their air of superiority, hip cocked, head tilted to the side.

She professes her judgments whole-heartedly, does Bekah. Not an inch of her in approval of your obvious inferiority.

"By the way, I broke your 1894 Slugger," she says without a twitch of those eyebrows or a shift in her gaze.

He goes very still. "What did you just say?"

"I took your 1894 Louisville Slugger, and sadly, owing to its antique value and the inability to procure another of its type, I broke it off in two vampires who I'm sure didn't appreciate it nearly as much as they should have, given the sentimental and financial value of it. Peasants these days."

"That was my favorite one, you shrill little bitch," he snaps, and her face brightens with such a smile, he's sure because to gouge a reaction from the handsomest, funniest, certainly most talented of all the Mikaelsons is always a feat, but in 1899 he hit Big Jim Colosimo in the face with it, and he never did polish off the bit of old rust that colored it all the way to the knob, and that's a bit of history you just don't get back, Rebekah.

"I know." She pats his cheek with a smile. "Isn't it a shame how one's favorite toy always goes missing in this family?"

"Maybe I should find yours, break it over my knee, and then shove the pieces in your back? You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Bekah? Stabbing people in the back, I mean."

She rolls her eyes. "I gave you one little poke and you get your panties all in a twist. You needed a bit of time off, little brother. Besides, it wasn't as though I waved a bloody white oak stake under your nose, like some people I could mention. What did you expect me to do? Sit round like Nik, sniffling over my poor, dear dead brother, who mere days before his own death tried to send me to the Other Side ahead of him?"

"Do you really think I would have killed you, Bekah?"

"You've always been an unrepentant little shit. Why do you think Nik left you daggered for so long, even after realizing that you had nothing to do with Father's appearance in New Orleans? He knew all about it, a paltry three years after he put you down for your little nap. And yet he just left you there. In fact, he never did let you out, did he- that was Elijah. He put you in your coffin because he thought you betrayed us to Mikael, and when he found out you didn't, he couldn't be bothered to right that particular wrong. Maybe because it wasn't much of a wrong after all- in fact, I always thought he regretted not having done it sooner, after the peace and quiet we enjoyed in your absence."

He's got a smile for every hurt.

It works better than you might think, for what does she do when confronted with the deepening of this dimple in his chin- not telegraph her regret with her eyes still just as lofty, not shift about on feet suddenly uncomfortable with this stance of the supercilious, she stands her ground quite nicely, Bekah, she has not a care to rest its burden on her back, she gives his cheek another pat.

"Remember that, Kol."

"What, that nobody wanted me? Takes one to know one, doesn't it, Bekah?"

She drops her smile. "Do you know how much less annoying you were dead? It's always just been the three of us anyway, really, Nik and Elijah and I. That was the way we liked it."

"I'm well aware of that, sister. You never let me forget it."

"Then stop sniffing round the house for the scraps Nik's tossing out of some misplaced sense of guilt, if he's even capable of that particular emotion."

"I'll be sure not to do that, since it irritates you so much. What's the matter, Bekah? Worried I'll elbow you off Nik's pedestal?"

"Nobody's ever put you on their pedestal, Kol," she snaps. "The novelty of you being back from the dead will wear off soon enough, and Nik will go back to stabbing you as soon as you whittle away his last nerve, which should take all of three days, if we're making generous estimates."

He stands smiling at her for a moment, his hands in his pockets, his heart somewhere in his boots.

He sets wordlessly out on his journey toward Tim's hotel, because he can play the bigger man, after all, let her get in her last precious word, his chattery little thing of a sister, he's not Nik, he hasn't the need to slip in the death stroke before his opponent's dagger finds his heart, he's got a whole ten lifetimes of carousing ahead of him, thanks to a dead witch whose tolerance for him might well have stretched farther than his own family's, but then, what competition is that?

Actually, though.

He's not that big. (Of course you know to what he does not allude, darlings, just ask Tim and the aching jaw he no doubt had to coddle till it'd got use to a mouthful like that.)

There's a minor detour prior to his final destination, and you know what they say about the journey, it's the going that's the thing, the arrival mere lace on the cake, and so on his way to the manor he finds two willing boys from a French Quarter bar that caters to this sort of thing, and into Bekah's bed they all tumble with the house empty round him as usual, and let's not broach specifics, for the faint of heart, but he leaves behind a whole lot of blood and other things besides, and he hasn't seen much of pornography, what need of a computer and an imagination when not a man or woman would refuse you, but he can tell you that the brunette had a shot like a star on him.

Pity he didn't have quite the aim.

"I'm going out with your little…hit squad, the next time they target somebody," Caroline tells him one night when he has unearthed one of his cellos thick with the powder of storage and slotted it between his knees to give the strings a tentative try with the bow, tuning them by ear as he rings each note off the rafters.

He stops.

He looks up at her from beneath his eyebrows. "Love, it's not self-defense. It's cold-blooded murder they're out there committing. Bit different from your more…righteous kills."

"Not every person I've killed has been in self-defense. And look, I know. I'm not saying I should turn into a murdery, jackass, mini-you. But I had all these plans, for college, and marriage, and babies, and I think…I think there's still a part of me that's holding onto that, storing it away for the future, but that's never going to be a thing, for someone like me. That's not how my life is going to turn out. I'm not going to have two kids and a pool and a PTA meeting every Friday, and one day that's not even going to matter to me, and neither are people, because you might be awful, but so is every other vampire who's made it out of their newborn years. Even Stefan can be really super callous when it comes to human life that's not in some way important to him or Elena. So what that means is one day…I'm going to be the same. You can't help it, right? Seeing so much mortality and never being touched by it? Death's just death. People are just bugs. That's how I'm going to think one day, right? No matter what I do. And somehow, I have to be able to live with myself."

He's not going to argue the preservation of your innocence, sweetheart, a monster like him. Time like so many of its wars will hammer it from your still bright and youthful eyes, as it snuffed out a boy who nursed his youngest brother back from fever and cried with the joy of those alert eyes and cool cheeks.

He balances the tip of his bow on the floor. "There's a werewolf we've marked next for our sights. I'll let Tim know his services will not be needed for this one."

"Ok," she says, and takes a deep breath. "How do I do it? So it's not immediately obvious that it's, you know, a vampire instead of just some random jerk face who just totally ruined his nightly walk and maybe deprived a wife and…a little baby of their family?" She catches her breath just a little.

"You shoot him in the back of the head," he says casually, tipping his head back to get the full scope of her, poor shaky little thing, his knees lolling themselves just a bit wider round the cello, the hand full of bow giving a twist to spin it like a top.

He smiles in a way that sets her heart to flight.

"Don't worry, love. I'll be right there with you."

So what she does, with him standing right alongside her as promised, is she sets against the temple of her victim the barrel of this gun he tells her is the same Mauser that punched the final hole into the head of the Irish rebel Michael Collins, and with her free hand she forces her victim to his knees by the collar of his shirt, and it's a cold night, the sky smells of snow, each of Klaus' breaths makes a little cloud in the air, and somewhere to her left is the smell of dumpster overflow and beignet topping, and if you've never murdered someone before, you'd be surprised, how much these other sensations overpower the trembling of this victim beneath your fingers and the acrid drip of urine on his leg and the incomprehensible mush of the pleas in his mouth, but that's not really what you're thinking about, it's the power of putting a man on his knees, this superior gender of better strength and faster reflexes who has nothing to fear from a little blonde thing like her, who can force his hand if he likes because what recourse does she have, her nails are pink, she never took a self-defense course in her life, screams do not foil statistics.

She read once that one in six women takes to bed a man she does not want, and she thinks, if only, as do all girls who surrender their safety to a pair of hands that do not listen, and she jerks the man's head back as roughly as she meant to handle Damon's, and she wonders-

She wonders what would her mom say; she wonders is Daddy watching; she wonders what the girl in princess heels and ballerina tutu might have gone on to do, and she pulls the trigger.

His blood sprays up a very long way.

To simultaneously cringe back and strain forward is such an awful, awful thing.

Klaus is staring at her.

Poor Caroline Forbes, who sat on a wall, who took her great fall.

She lowers the gun.

Her hand is shaking, so he takes it from her, and he slips it into the waistband of his pants, right against the small of his back, and he crouches down next to this victim of hers, to tilt the man's head with the tips of his fingers to one side, so that this exit hole she has blown is only one great eye, keeping lookout for threatening snow, and if you want to know her very worst secret, she looks at Klaus and his curls white with moonlight and his hand red with blood and she scents out every little nuance of death here in this alley black with midnight and a dead man's best years, and she wants to bear him down onto the sidewalk beside her victim, and take him until he screams.

He's not always the douche overlord of the universe, because he senses this, she knows he does, he senses everything, but he straightens without a single seductive dimple, he lets her make the first move, and oh God, she was going to be so, so good, she was going to make her amends for her mean girl trivialities and her teenaged transgressions, she was going to marry young, age well, yearn beyond her four small walls to the artwork of Paris and the sands of Egypt but stay always ensconced in her safe little box-

She pushes him up against the wall of the alley, wrestling his belt.

He undoes her jeans one-handed and yanks them down so hard he puts a tear in the left thigh.

She kicks them away.

He bites her neck with his human teeth, working his hand down her panties, two of his fingers already in her, his lips leaving her neck to take a nip at her jaw line, her chin, the corner of her mouth, his free hand coming up to cradle the back of her head, their exhales steaming in the air.

She jerks his pants and boxers down together, and presses herself against him.

He lets out a breath against her lips as she grips him in her hand and begins to work him roughly up and down, pacing her fingers to his own, the head of him nudging her clit through her panties, both of them damp, Klaus' kisses turning frenzied, her forehead lolling against his shoulder as he brings her right there, so close her toes curl painfully inside her shoes, and then he wrenches her panties to one side and he slips himself right up against her, and three strokes with the head of his slippery cock and she cries out, bunching his jacket in her fists.

He lifts her by the ass to wrap her legs around his waist and gives a thrust that puts him all the way inside, his face buried in her neck, and just three brutal pumps and she feels his orgasm trickle wetly down her thigh, but he keeps going, his fingers digging into her ass, his breath jagged against her neck, his necklaces jangling, and angled just right he hits her so completely perfectly all over again, and she grips another handful of his jacket to ride this wave, stifling her choked little cries against his shoulder, one hand pulling him up by the hair to exchange a round of sloppy kisses that leave them both breathless, Klaus' tongue fucking her nearly as hard as his pistoning hips, both of them making little noises against the others' mouth.

She sees him come before she feels the second warm spurt of it inside her, his eyes fluttering, his head dropping back against the wall, his throat stalling on the breath of sharp January he tries to swallow down into his lungs.

"Right there- stay right there," she gasps into his ear, rolling her hips furiously as he uses the leverage of his hands on her ass to pull her nearly off him and then to slide her back down, so freaking slowly, and now he forces her to this pace with his fingertips, a little smirk on his lips from what she can see of them, his head still back against the wall, his eyes half-lidded, and so she latches onto his throat with her fangs, and she drinks until he's worked up enough to pull her in so tightly she can barely breathe, his hips bruising hers, his own teeth out, his fingers sliding up to poke slits into her jacket, he grips her that hard.

He licks his blood from her lips.

She kisses the veins under his eyes.

They both come a third time, so hard she has to muffle it in his shoulder and his knees nearly drop out from beneath him.

He holds her for a long moment with his face pressed into her shoulder, his heart thundering in her ears, winter running a long finger up her spine to put a shiver all the way down to her toes.

He lets her down to go find her pants, pulling up his own and loudly doing up the buckle.

She has just barely buttoned her jeans when his arms circle her from behind and she feels his nose press up against her neck, and it's still so odd, the tenderness in this.

He doesn't even say anything.

Maybe he can't.

So she just stares at this man faceup in the ice and gray of this brisk winter evening, still leaking his most important parts, and she lets him hold her, because she was supposed to be full of light, and love, and all the things that are not present, in the hearts of things that put guns to the heads of the innocent, and yet he still wants to, freaking imagine that.

Do you think-

Do you think her mom would?

Marcel takes to his heels after her little visit, which hardly endears her to Nik, but her brother always has something else to put his eye to, so while Marcel burrows himself into New Orleans' hospitality Nik turns his attention to the soldiers and their wooden bullets while Kol makes himself scarce who the hell cares where, the ass.

She has better things to concern herself with.

She is sitting behind Nik's desk one afternoon while Caroline rifles the files, inspecting her nails, darting little looks here and there to this girl who has not a glance of attention for her, and it's been a very long time, perhaps an entire century, not counting that annoying little Gilbert twit who was surely the worst of her missteps, but she thinks she understands still how to put forth those little feelers of friendship.

Her favorite color is blue, she trembled her way through her first kiss at ten, she forced Nik with his cheeks full of embarrassment to kiss well her dolls and all their hurts.

Aren't these the things meant to be shared between girls and blankets, their communal sheets a shelter over their giggles and their confidences?

She watches Caroline read, drumming her fingers on Nik's desk, and then when there comes the moment of this pressure built too high inside her, everything straining away at the seams, she leans forward with her legs crossed and she blurts out, "My favorite color is blue," and then she holds her breath, heart still inside her, her eyes full of what she very well bloody hopes is only nonchalance.

Caroline lifts her head from the file in her hand, frowning a little.

It's a strange little look Caroline gives her, as though what can be made of this thousand-year-old girl who never got her prom, put her to the microscope and peel her slowly back, if religion has failed in offering its answers ten centuries in the making, perhaps science can be of help, because surely there must be some explanation for the third eldest of the surviving Mikaelsons and her consistent disappointments.

She'd like to know herself, actually.

So Nik didn't love her enough to not resign her to nearly a century of sleep like death, and not a one of the lovers she pleasured surely enough on her thousand count sheets stuck round for good save the ones she split open and spread round her pillows, but give this girl with hair not nearly so lovely as her own credit-

She loves Nik, after all.

There isn't a bit of leftover room, where she might squeeze herself in to stand elbow to elbow with him for once?

Caroline flips her folder closed.

She brushes a curl out of her eye, and there's a little smile on her face, maybe a bit confused, but probably just tentative, because she thinks the girl gets it, else why would she smile like that, like here is a beginning, she doesn't mind it, in fact it's actually quite nice, and then she says, "Mine too", and they both light up rather stupidly, till Nik stumbles his bloody oaf feet into the room and ruins it.

"What are you doing in here?" he demands.

"She can be in here if she wants," Caroline tells him.

"Thank you, love; I'll decide who is allowed in my own office."

"Don't take that tone with me."

"I'll take whatever tone I like, Caroline."

"What's crawled up your behind, Nik?"

He rubs a hand down his face. "Have either of you heard from Kol, or Tim?"

"Yeah, Klaus; in fact, just the other day, Tim and I were texting one another about the little muscles that stand out in your shoulders when you're on top. And debating the merits of blue vs. black on you, the first matching your eyes, and the second bringing out your soul. And Kol- you know how close he and I are."

"I could do without the sarcasm, sweetheart."

"Then don't ask a stupid question."

"Rebekah, will I be getting a slightly more helpful answer out of you?"

She twirls the strand of pearls round her neck. "How would I know where that little twit and his boyfriend have got off to? Do you know, by the way, that the other day he left two dead men and the leftovers of his whoring in my bed?"

"Yes, Bekah, I believe the whole of the French Quarter was made aware of that when you screeched something indiscernible and then promised to mount his head on one of your bedposts."

"That's disgusting," Caroline says, wrinkling her nose.

"That's our brother for you," she replies, putting her feet up on Nik's desk.

"Papers!" Caroline snaps, flapping one hand spastically at the stack she has nearly upset.

She rolls her eyes.

Nik claps his hands and leaves them pressed together. "Well, should either of you happen to run across our dynamic duo, if you could drop word that Tim's life is dependent upon his usefulness, a quality he is sorely lacking at the moment, having put himself out of touch for the last three jobs that should have gone to him. These witches and werewolves and vampires-"

"Oh my," Caroline cuts in.

They both smile at Nik's pissy expression.

"-are not going to kill themselves."

"Don't you have, like, eight hundred minions at your beck and call? Why don't you just leave him and Kol to whatever it is they're doing?"

"A.K.A., then Caroline doesn't have to see his stupid, pretty little face, and won't ruin her nails on his eyeballs."

"Ok, like I'm the only one who doesn't like him. Last week, you referred to him as 'that little Irish slut' and did this really crappy imitation of his accent. I mean, that guy on the Lucky Charms box could have done better. And he's made out of cardboard."

"Whatever my talents in accent imitation, which, by the way, are far greater than you're implying, he's annoying, and I think Nik should just eat him and be done with it."

"Right?"

"Yes, Caroline, but you dislike him because nearly a century ago he broke his virginity on Nik's…assets."

"Yeah."

"That's petty."

"And your reason for disliking him is because you're pure and noble-hearted and once you saw him eat a poor person?"

"No; I don't like him because he's horning in on Kol."

"That's the same thing!"

"It is not."

"Klaus, tell her that's the same thing!"

"Nik, tell her if she doesn't shut her shrill, insect-like mouth, I'm going to do it for her. With my shoe."

Caroline snorts. "Please. Those are Caroline Herreras. They're not going anywhere near me."

"You're right, of course, for once. I wouldn't sully a brand name in that way."

"Excuse me, ladies, are you done? I wouldn't dream of interrupting."

They both give him a look.

He points at her. "Why don't you go and patch things up with Kol and perhaps he might grace us for a moment or two with his formerly dead presence?"

"You're starting to sound like Elijah."

"You bloody well chased him off with your latest spewing of brat, which he alluded to about five days ago, the last time I saw him, and now he's taken Tim along for the ride, and you know how Kol tends to rub off on people."

"Yeah; what if Tim gets it into his head that he's entitled to his own life and shouldn't have to live under the constant threat of death by evisceration if he doesn't duck his head to every single command of yours?"

"Caroline."

She flings the folder she is still holding against his chest. "Read this. I made some changes to it."

He traps it against his chest with one hand as she lets go, his jaw tightening.

She clicks her fingers at Nik. "Excuse me, back to me. Anyway, Kol was being a jerk. And if you happen to remember, Nik, he tried to kill me right before he died. I'm not just going to go down on my knees and lick his toes."

"A 'sorry I told you to stay dead' wouldn't be out of line."

"Oh my God- did Klaus Mikaelson just offer an apology as a solution to a problem?"

"Don't you and Stefan need to get your hair done, or something?" he snaps.

"That's not what I said!"

"It's close enough."

"Is that what he told you?"

"He comes dragging in here with a smile to split his face and news of some dust-up between the two of you, then he takes off for nearly a week with his Celtic security blanket in tow; I can connect the dots, sister."

"Why do you always assume the worst of me?"

"Because you're a bitch."

"Shut up, Caroline!"

"Ok, with all of the doublespeak and innuendo that goes on among this family, I just think that sometimes a little straight-up honesty is much-needed."

"Here's a bit of honesty for you, Caroline: Nik thinks you look fat in that red dress you wore the other day."

"Rebekah!"

"Oh my God!" Caroline snaps, snatching the folder back out of his hands to hit him with it. "Is that why you ripped it off me so fast? Oh my God, you stupid jerk!"

"Stop it!" he snaps, putting up his hands to ward off her blows. "Rebekah is just having herself a bit of fun at my expense, because if she's miserable, so must be the entire world."

"That's bloody rich, Nik, coming from you."

"Sorry I actually have an ass!" Caroline yells, still trying to stretch her blows past his blocks.

"Tim's isn't that big," she points out, leaning back in Nik's chair with a smile. "Actually, if I remember correctly, that was what Nik liked about it."

"I will dagger you and leave you to rot away your next three lifetimes in your coffin," he hisses, both his hands coming down on the table as he tips himself forward to give her a thrust like a knife with his eyes.

She smiles again. "Remember that time Tim didn't leave your room for nearly two days?"

"Remember the time I stabbed you and you didn't wake up for eighty-eight years?" he asks with a little flash of his dimples, his eyes like murder.

Caroline gives up on her assault and turns back to the filing cabinet with a huff.

"I'll prove what I feel for your body later, Caroline, love."

"I think I'm going to induce vomiting now."

Nik rolls his eyes. "Just keep an eye out for our brother, will you, Bekah? I have a task I thought might be conducive to a little brotherly bonding, and Elijah, though amiable to it, just isn't prone to the sort of enthusiasm I know Kol will work up for it."

"Shots contests at the local gay bar, and to the winner goes the handsomest?"

"Even better," Nik says, his smile in full blossom now, and he leans over to plant a lingering kiss on Caroline's cheek before whisking himself out the door.

Mondays are a bit slow at the Dragon's Den, though he hears there is soon to be a burlesque contest he'll need to pop round for if only he can convince Tim to lace himself into the Big Easy's frilliest corset and knickers, and so it's rather lazily he tucks himself in at the bar beside Tim, the sloth of this place getting even to him.

He itches his stubble on Tim's shoulder and takes a drink of the cocktail he is holding, something horrible, he should well have plugged his nose before downing that, because though he can give no higher accolades to the boy's choice in men (it's his thigh Tim's hand is resting on, after all), his alcohol is another matter altogether apparently.

Thought he taught you better than that, Timmy.

"What the hell is that, darling?"

Tim squints at the glass he is holding. "A 'Side Car'? I don't know what the hell's in it."

"Ass, I think."

Tim ducks his head and laughs.

"Stick with Guinness, mate." He runs his thumb over the drop on Tim's bottom lip and slips it into his mouth.

"Thought you hated the taste of it?"

"It wasn't the drink I was tasting."

Tim pulls his hat down a little lower, and he sees that he's red to the tips of his ears, and with a laugh he slings his arm round the boy's shoulders and playfully bites the lobe of his ear.

The man sitting a stool down from them leaves off his quick peripheral glances to stare openly, drink forgotten in front of him.

He runs his nose up the side of Tim's neck, then tips himself to the side to peer round the back of Tim's head at the man, licking his lips.

The man clears his throat and hunches his shoulders over his drink. "I think you should probably take that somewhere else."

"Oh, right, well- could you recommend a good hotel? I'm new to town and my friend here can't choose; he says they're all just brilliant, very sturdy beds. You know, once he actually broke a church pew underneath me, so you can imagine we'd be concerned with durable construction. Let me tell you, mate, when this man gets after it, he gets after it. He's a- what's the term? Right; I believe it's, 'lady in the streets, freak in the sheets'."

Tim has not peeped his head up, but he's obviously got enough drink in him to smooth the discomfiture of this, because he's laughing almost soundlessly, his shoulders shaking, the hand he has taken off the thigh which feels rather cold with the absence of it going to support his forehead.

The man moves.

"It's boring in here."

"Because you keep chasing off anyone who sits within ten feet of us."

"You're right, darling- that's my bad. The apathy certainly isn't, however. I suppose it's going to take something drastic to wake this crowd." He leans his elbow down on the bar and tilts his head until he's viewing Tim upside down. "Are you drunk enough yet to get up and dance?"

"Couldn't get enough in me."

"Now, that's just not true, Timothy. I've seen you step dance with the best of them to a reel or two in your time. No faster feet in all the seven continents. Although I agree you can never get enough in you. But not to worry- I like insatiability in a man." He hops down off his stool and cracks his neck. "Darling?" he calls across to the DJ at his table, turning a few heads with the sudden lift of his voice. "Have you got 'Candyman' by Christina Aguilera?"

The man gives him an odd look. "Uh, I guess, bro."

"Good; get it ready, but don't put it on till I say."

He leaps up onto the bar and holds out his arms theatrically, because if Nik has done him any good turn in either of their very long lives, it is to instill in him the absolute necessity of a bit of drama.

No sense in living a thousand years of plain vanilla moments. An entrance is like sex, after all: hit it hard and leave them remembering, and if some fool doesn't have the good taste to keep you branded for all his days in that obviously miniscule brain of his, kill everyone and have yourself a drink, darling.

Or another partner.

He once slept with two ladies who turned out to be that poisonous variety of clinger that can't leave off for so much as a day, so to his fangs they fell, and no sooner the blood licked off his lips than he found himself one of those proper older gentleman of the hat and tails, who spends his days wrestling his demons and his nights giving them free rein in back parlors full of similar sins.

He didn't have a gag reflex that one, but if he noticed no tent in his trousers, it was to no absence of arousal that could be attributed, because he flew all four inches of him proud as any holiday flag.

You don't waste your time on that nonsense, however. Maybe put his lips to your cock for another round if you're not quite done, because tip to throat is nothing to flip your hand at, but make a meal of him before further expectations are let roam, unless your inclinations slant toward twigs that haven't the bulk to start a fire.

Tim leans back on his stool.

"Patrons, your attention, please," he asks politely, waiting until all eyes are upon him. "Tim, lift your glass, darling," he says, and Tim obliges him, balancing it on his knee. "Now I want everyone to enjoy the show, no matter what happens, no matter what you see, and remember- lots of applause; I like an appreciative audience. In fact, why don't we get a round going now, just to get my enthusiasm up?"

The customers clap obediently.

"That's no good- put your backs into it," he scolds them playfully, and they send up a cheer to shake the rafters.

He squats down to swipe Tim's hat from his head. "It just won't have the same flair, if I don't have this. You understand."

"I don't understand much of what you do, Mikaelson."

"But you're still tagging along, O'Sullivan," he says, and planting a hand on either of the boy's cheeks, he leans in for one of those ridiculous kisses meant to aggravate, full of spit and talent less gumming away, both of them laughing when he breaks it, a far cry from Elijah, who in response to similar treatment broke his neck and lectured over his healing paralysis about the conduct of dinner guests at Buckingham House.

"All right," he says to the DJ as he stands, adjusting the cap on his head. "Hit it, darling."

Opening bars with their touch of swing- put your hips into that, a tip of the hat, and now as the trumpets blare, a little spin, drop down onto the bar, cross your legs, uncross them with an artistic flick, put a hand to the mouth, and down you go.

The floor is open to him, of course, as are all floors anywhere he wishes to walk, and of course he has already elaborated on the important of entrances, and so as soon as his feet touch down, he takes a running start into a flip, spins himself like a gymnast mid-air, arches neatly through two back hand springs.

The showcase of the jive is these frenzied flicks and kicks of the feet, and so as Tarzan and Jane begin their swinging of the vine he crosses his leg over behind him to tap his toe, kicks neatly out to the side, turns a beautiful one-eighty, drops himself into a backbend, one hand on the floor, the other above him, is up again and running with the calculated steps of the dancer.

He takes up his steps in front of the nearest table, his kicks on point as he flicks both arms to the side, the knife edge of his right hand taking off the head of a man watching from his booth, and now another spin and a hop carries him onto the table of a woman and the pale, hairy little thing he assumes is her significant other, and another few stomps of his heels, a side flick, a forward kick, and she slumps forward spouting from the hole his boot has just put through her throat.

He back flips off the table.

"Tim."

"No," his friend says, setting down his drink.

"Timothy," he says, dancing into the middle of the floor once more as Christina pops her cherry over this famed candyman he wouldn't mind meeting himself.

"No, for Christ's sake, you fucker."

He spins, and snaps his hand out for Tim to take, his feet still perfectly in rhythm, the fingers of his free hand clicking out the beat of the song. "Everyone give him a little encouragement; he's a bit shy."

The man across from his gurgling girlfriend claps loudest of all.

Tim shakes his head, but he lets himself be pulled to his feet nevertheless.

Christina's candyman of the sugarcane lips and one stop shop sweet talks his way round to loosing those rather easy panties of hers once more, and he takes the hat from his head, gives it a little toss to weigh it, flips it the four inches up he needs to clear Tim's extra height, landing the cap at a rather rakish angle on the boy's head.

Another large arm movement chops off the head of the bigoted bar patron.

He spins Tim.

"You are drunk," he says, pointing at him as both their steps begin to mirror one another now, Tim's kicks very sharp (you see what he said about those feet of his, he's quite light on them, for such an awkward man), he dancing round him with some hip movements that he wouldn't say are obscene, but if someone perhaps of Irish descent were to see in them a suggestion of other activities and get it into his head to take him upstairs where the lights are much lower, the booths more private, he's not about to set his back full of superior years to resisting this.

Tim smiles, his hat down a little low, partially blocking his eyes.

They turn with the beat, in unison.

He leaps onto another table, snatches another head, takes a running jump off the edge and straight into Tim, who puts out his arms and catches him with enough shock that it throws off his footwork.

It makes for quite a nice finale, the head lifted in triumph, Tim holding him like a maiden fresh from her dragon.

The door swings open.

"Nik," he says, and his brother smiles very amicably.

Tim drops him.

"Having fun, are we?"

Well, well.

He clasps his hands behind his back.

Don't stop on his account, of course, he enjoys a good live performance much as the next man, and Kol has quite the skill in his step, because Elijah sees no merit in the Latin forms with their vulgar hips and mangled footwork, so of course what else had this youngest and most provocative of the Mikaelsons to do but perfect them all.

He steps forward, letting the door swing shut behind him.

Tim has a bit of drink in him, a mere pint or half a dozen of them he couldn't tell you, poor lad never did hold it well, even for a monster, but fear wipes the smile right off his face, quick as soberness, and to his pocket goes his hand, to fiddle round, he presumes, with the phone he has not answered in nearly a week.

"I assume cell signal on this side of the city is just awful," he says, taking another step under the watch of this eerily motionless audience of Kol's, the DJ lounging back behind his station to re-start this hymn to some candyman and his panty-dropping strumpet, to quote this brother of his who looks wary enough to sting him.

Truly this look is a blow, dear Kol, to one with so sensitive a soul as his.

"I lost me phone," Tim blurts out.

Tch tch.

Going to cost you, Timmy.

Let's tally up the sheet, shall we?

Insubordination.

He skirts round the bar, stoppers the drain of the sink.

Fraternization with one's fellow employees, which, color him not surprised, his brother never has counted restraint among his strengths, but he did pair the two of you for work and not play, and certainly it's none of his business, what you get up to off the clock, but a week without so much as a ring- well, that's quite a long time, now, isn't it Timmy.

He takes the bottle of half-open whiskey from the bartender with a smile, and pours it into the stopped-up sink.

And, worst of all, Tim, because no one likes a liar, mate, that little fib you just slapped down at his feet to try and mete out some of the responsibility you'd have done far better to just shoulder all your own.

He adds a fifth of vodka to the sink, tops this off with a bit of Wild Turkey, shakes in just a bit more whiskey, until this concoction lips nearly at the brim, and then with empty whiskey bottle in hand, he hops up onto the bar.

"Tim," he says, and beckons with a finger, and give the lad a bit of credit, he understands where disobedience will get him, so with hardly a hesitation he steps forward into range, and that's all he's asking for, mate, just a bit of respect.

He takes the boy's hat from his head and tosses it to Kol, smoothing down some of the strands he's mussed. "We wouldn't want your little hat getting all messy, now would we?"

He smiles.

"I'm very sorry about this, Tim," he says sympathetically, touching his hand to the boy's cheek.

"Nik," Kol puts in, stepping forward.

He replaces his hand with the bottle, swinging from the shoulder, really putting himself into the blow, the force of it just obliterating poor Tim's cheek, and now with a hard tug of the shirt collar that nearly comes off in his hand, he yanks Tim over the bar and plunges him face first into this basin full of alcohol.

The boy open his mouth to scream and chokes on the rush of it, so he pushes him down until the boy's nose is flush with the metal of the drain, hard enough to bend the bone, quite kind of him, really- just think of the agony if his sinuses were entirely up to snuff and not mashed about in this stew of blood and bone he has made of this finely-sculpted face, horrible as the mustard gas of that first great war's bloody trenches, he assumes.

"Nik."

He pulls Tim up and pats him on the back.

"You're all right, mate, just take a deep one," he reassures him, and three liquid gasps and he pushes Tim under once more, this concoction of his so red he can hardly see the boy's hair for it.

What do you think he should call it?

A Bloody Tim is far too obvious, of course.

"Nik, let him up!" Kol screams.

He pulls Tim back up for air. "I really do apologize, mate, but you know I can't just let my employees go running round the town without an eye to their duties, ignoring my calls, not so much as a step round to the house for a quick check-in. You play favorites with one, and suddenly they're all clamoring for their freedom and their retirement benefits, your reputation in shambles." He waves his hand carelessly. "It's just a mess."

Wound starting to close up a bit there, it looks like, can't have that, now can we, Tim?

He splits the boy's forehead on the edge of the sink and pushes him forward for another dunking.

"Nik, stop! Nik, please!"

He lifts Tim up by the roots of his hair, the boy wheezing out his lungful of bourbon, his ruined nose dripping clots, his fingers gripping the sink for leverage in this backward shove he attempts against these hands far superior to him, and he appreciates that, truly he does, puts him in fond memory of those 20th century Irish who made him such a fit family with his own quite indisposed in their coffins. Always the spirit of the rebellion in those quarrelsome men not resigned to the boot.

"Just breathe, mate; you've got it. Good set of lungs on you, Timmy."

Red Russian.

No, he doesn't like that either.

Tim and Tonic.

He laughs to himself and pushes Tim back under.

He yanks him back up and puts his lips to Tim's ear. "He's not approaching you'll notice, even though he's frothing at the mouth to ride in to your rescue. He's not much for white horses, my brother, but he does have his moments of chivalry. So do you want to know why he won't step in?" He licks his lips with a smile. "He's afraid I'm going to kill you, and any wrong step on his part will tip me right over that edge from which none of us, especially you, can return." He gives the boy a friendly clap of the shoulder. "So it's just the two of us, if you'd like to, perhaps, issue an apology or anything of the sort." He cups his hand playfully round his ear. "Nothing?" He clicks his tongue. "Terrible manners on you, mate. Wonder where you picked that up?"

Down goes the boy's head again, his fingers tightening to the cracking point, those white knuckles giving way with splinters that send Kol over the bar at last, but still he keeps his distance, this brother of his who brushes off his intelligence with his flippancy, because he understands well this hierarchy of the monster, and he can assure you, mate, to the top tier forever goes this perfect union of beast and beast.

"Nik, let him the fuck up! He's done trying to flout your bloody fucking authority; let him go!"

"I have a quick proposal first. We never talk anymore, you and I, so I thought a little get together between us boys, just the three of us, you, me, Elijah, would be just the thing. Nothing especially fancy, although I think you'll enjoy it, especially with the little twist I've put on it."

He grinds Tim's nose once more into the bottom of the sink, and he watches another gout of blood puff up, quite a pretty thing, really, he always had a preference for red, just such an eye-catching thing, you know, and now the boy's flailing begins to weaken as his lungs stall on their latest gulp of inebriation, his hands going slack against the sink.

"You, me, Elijah, and the NOPD's armored personnel carrier, because of course in these unsure times, you never know when something like that will come in handy. But the twist- no running in and compelling the fight out of everyone, you've got to sneak round like any old common human thief and carry it off right under the noses of New Orleans' finest."

Tim gets let up for a moment, just long enough for another two painful breaths, poor mate, got to watch whom you take for your acquaintance, and then down again he goes, screaming out the injustice of it all.

"Say you will," he says playfully.

"Yes, Nik."

"Come on, little brother- where's your passion?"

"Nik," Kol replies sharply, crack in his voice, panic in his eyes, and as he's not so black-hearted as you might expect, he lets loose as the last of the boy's fight leaves him, throwing his hands up with a sigh.

"All right; tough crowd."

Tim folds his knees underneath him and lets this fall drag his head free of the sink, spitting blood and booze on his way down.

"Midnight tomorrow, brother. Don't be late; you know I hate that. And Tim? I've a new task for you. Meet me at the house tomorrow evening, same time. You're going to put quite a damper on this military occupation of the humans'. Get yourself into their HQ at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel and sabotage all their supplies. You can do it however you like- burn the whole hotel down, if you see fit," he offers magnanimously.

Kol kneels beside Tim as he coughs up what sounds to be half a lung, poor lad.

"Oh, and Kol- don't put his hat back on till you've got him toweled off. Those things take just forever to dry."

He pulls the stopper on the drain.

"Merry Irishman," he blurts out suddenly, snapping his fingers.

"What?" Kol asks, wrinkling his brow up at him, the hand he has got on Tim's back assisting some of the alcohol from the boy's lungs.

"Oh, it's nothing," he says innocently, dipping his finger into the brew circling its slow death round the drain and sampling a bit of it from the drop on his nail. "Very interesting. Big hit with the under-21 crowd, I think. Packs that punch they like in a small amount. Three sheets to the wind after hardly a glass."

He smiles till his dimples deepen in his cheeks.

"Anyway, no hard feelings, I hope? Brother?"

Tim has got himself on his knees and put a bit of space between himself and Kol, which is rather a shame, but certainly to be expected, and anyway, sate your physical desires wherever you will, little brother, but your emotional requirements you ought well to be home filling with your family who misses you.

He smiles again. "Until tomorrow, then?"

Tim opts to walk himself back to The Quarter House.

He's got no argument to put forth into this rather eerie silence Tim has let spring up between them, his hat on his sopping head, never mind Nik's warning, hands in his pockets, his cheek healed cleanly, his nose once more set to its correct angle, steps brisk as he plows his way head-down through this after-work bustle of the drinking crowd out to stretch its legs.

"Nik's a prick."

"Yeah," Tim says, and then he just veers off down a shortcut between a pair of dive bars that must have seen their births sometime round the start of the city itself. "I'll be seeing myself home."

"Right."

Can't hardly blame the man, though it puts a droop in his shoulders like he's a pair of weights to them.

He never did deserve anything permanent, did he, Nik?

Except you.

He never thought he did anything that horrible.

Kol punches him promptly in the face upon his return home, and they turn his office into a veritable ring, brawling round the whole thing until all the filing cabinets are down on their faces and Elijah has to separate them out before the killing blow is struck, both his hands to their chests, his tie disheveled from this struggle he has cast himself into, his face none too pleased with it.

"I can't even have a friend, Nik?" Kol demands, and if he's not mistaken, his youngest sibling is nearly in tears, and what a poke he is given by this conscience Caroline for some reason keeps insisting is not at all a hindrance.

"Please, Kol. You've got us."

His laugh is very bitter.

"I know. Remind me again why I left death for this?"

"Kol," Elijah interjects quietly, and the youngest of them snaps himself out of his brother's steadying fingers, one hand going violently back through his hair.

"No, Elijah. He's a little shit. I hung round, and I watched him grieve like a real fucking person, and I spent a whole fucking year over on the Other Side thinking about this, and how I wanted to get back to him, because I missed him, because we had yet to patch up the rift he put between us when he stuck that dagger in my heart, and do you know what he was sad for, Elijah? Not me, Elijah. Not me fucking at all!" he screams, and both of them are absolutely silent at this uncharacteristic outburst, the violence of it drawing both Caroline and Rebekah to the door, eyes wide. "He was sad for himself, because he had one less bloody pawn, because dead I was out of his reach forever, I didn't belong to him anymore, so he could throw me around like the toy he doesn't give a shit about, till someone else wants it."

He swallows.

Kol's shoulders are going like a marathon runner's just feet from the tape.

"So piss off, Nik. Piss the fuck off, and have yourself a nice millennium," he spits, and then he turns round on his heel, and he shoulders his way past Bekah and Caroline before the crack in his voice can split itself into something worse.

Bekah follows him down the stairs.

Elijah slips politely past Caroline, excusing himself as he brushes her arm with his own.

She stares in at him from the doorway.

"It's not true," he says, tossing up his hands, feeling quite shrunken by her eyes, the lump in his throat blocking any further defense he hasn't the heart to put forth anyway.

"It doesn't matter," she says quietly. "That's how you made him feel."

Tim makes his prompt appearance at midnight the following evening, but Kol does not.

He tells them all, boy, Elijah, faceless what'shisname, who was to accompany Tim on his saboteur's mission, that everything is off, thank you, dismissed, everyone, and soon as they shuffle out of his office, he overturns his desk and kicks it across the room for good measure, breaking his foot with the force of the blow.

He tries his luck at Tim's former room at The Quarter House, but of course he's already shifted himself elsewhere, so for three days he has to go poking round the city, compelling his way into rooms until a search of one nets him five pistols and that Bible with its jagged center, and of course a wait in the dark is rather sinister, but it's home, for creatures like him, so here he is sitting on Tim's bed with his hands clasped when Tim lets himself in with revolver already in hand and low by his side, his smile not very hopeful, because Tim's happiest greetings always flashed his two slightly crooked front teeth, and there's nothing but stone in the boy's face now as they confront one another over this dark stretch of carpet.

He tries anyway.

It's the only thing he knows, to keep pushing forward.

It's what things old as Time do.

"I'm leaving. Thought I'd pop over to Europe for a while, dust off my Italian, maybe go see Vatican City? It's probably recovered from my last visit."

"I think you should probably go by yourself." Tim toes the door shut behind him, and slips his gun into the waistband of his trousers.

He smiles.

It's what you do, is all.

"I thought you'd probably say that. Can't blame me for trying. Have to get my trysts on the road, I guess."

"Well, good luck."

He looks down at his hands. "Do you have to talk to me like we shared a couple of beers once and then went our separate ways after an hour of casual jibber-jabber?"

"No," Tim says, and he takes a breath. "I'm talking to you like I have to."

He squints up at Tim.

"Klaus'll come after us, he thinks you're angling for some happy ending that doesn't include him. And what if it's not me he takes? I had one friend who really meant something to me. I tried to make a couple others in Ireland, but you know me, voice just stops up in me fucking throat, and there was always that line between us, and what if they crossed it, to find out that the quiet little Mick sharing elbow space in their hay loft was a buggerer and a monster, and who can say the worst of the two? No friendship for a man who wants to either fuck your good Catholic ass, or eat it."

"I was a friend?" he asks, blowing out a laugh that isn't funny.

"It's the most important part of what you were."

"I can shake Nik," he says, something that sounds a whole lot like desperation in this one choked sentence, his hands shaky with it, his throat a bloody mess right round where he stores his voice.

"I don't want to," Tim says quietly.

"Why?" he asks plaintively.

"Because you died and I was a long time getting over it, you fucker. And then you were here suddenly, and we just slipped right back into it, and I thought, you know, it's not true, what you said, about everything except me ending. But it will. Somewhere in Scotland or Africa or Peru we'll take another look over our shoulder and there'll be your brother, and he'll kill me or dagger you, and maybe this time I'll take off me ring and walk into the sun over it, and what fucking way to end a story is that?"

"So you'll just stay here and slave away for him?"

Tim undoes the buttons on his vest, for something to do with his hands, he knows, the awkward little shit.

"He likes useful things. And one day he'll leave this city with Caroline and Elijah and Rebekah and he'll forget about me, because it's not the first time he's done it, and that'll be it, I'll have me freedom."

He swallows and puts the squint back in his eyes, because it seems to be the only way he can face this conversation, sticky as it is in his throat and between his ribs. "What about then?"

Tim wets his lips. "What about it?"

"If Nik's off my back, if he doesn't care about yours anymore- what about then?"

"What if that's two hundred years from now?"

He lets out another painful laugh, unlacing his hands to loll them in a shrug across his knees. "I'll still be pretty, darling- what are you worried about?"

There is the barest flicker across Tim's lips.

"4014- I'll meet you in Kerry. I'm sure there's a tomb or church or something that'll still be round two centuries from now, where we can wait."

"Puicin An Chairn. It's a wedge tomb out on the Dingle Peninsula. It'll be around longer than any of us. Probably outlast the whole fuckin' planet."

"I'm going to ignore, in light of this very serious conversation, the fact that you just said 'Dingle' Peninsula."

That barest flicker turns into a real smile, and that's what he likes to see, darling.

Show it a bit longer?

It'll have to last him quite a while.

"Get out of here, you fucker," Tim says, but it's gently done.

He stands with his hands in his pockets, and they face one another with that same dark stretch of carpet between them, neither of them nudging forward a step to chip away this distance, Tim clicking away at that pocket watch in his trousers, he fiddling with the bit of lint he dredges up from his seams.

"Say good-bye the French way?"

"Au revoir."

"That's not what I meant, darling."

Tim's smile is soft but he doesn't move. "I know what you meant."

That's what he thought.

Always worth a try, though, right, mate?

"All right, but you'll at least owe me a greeting in French, two hundred years from now."

"Is that all you can think of? Laying your hands on my Hollywood body?"

"Of course not. Some parts of you are positively porn starrish; I think about those a lot, too"

Tim smiles. "Say hello to the Pope for me."

"I'll do better than that- I'll have sex with him and then tell you all about it."

"No you won't, you shallow little shit."

"Fine- I'll sleep with one of his younger, more attractive underlings while he watches and finds himself uncomfortably stirred by the whole thing, and then I'll tell you all about that. What famous star of the twenty-first century will you sleep with and tell me all about?"

"Prince Harry."

He laughs despite himself. "What, is that an Irish thing? You like them gingery?"

"It's a gold-digging whore thing. I like them rich."

"I have billions. Probably. Elijah handles the management of all the vineyards and stock market deals. I just compel and/or seduce whatever I want."

They share a smile at their own mutual wittiness, and then he breaches this distance between them and he touches his fingers to Tim's chin, just one brief flick of the stubble trying with such futility to poke its way up out of the pores, a lingering kiss pressed to the same spot, their foreheads coming together, Tim raising up his hat when the brim sticks between them, and a stroke with his thumbs along the cheeks he brings his hands round to cup and he slips past Tim, out the door, into the hall, and weep not for a life of his own choosing, darlings.

You'd be surprised how rarely those come round.

A/N: I realize that in the first part of this fic, I made mention of a Rebekah-centric flashback, and also promised that there was more to Tyler's cameo than the brief little paragraph he was afforded, and all of that will still come to fruition, I promise. Originally, I intended to write a third part to this fic, but then I decided, no, actually, I want to leave off right here, and so here is where we all part ways with the ninth fic, with those bits of plot I mentioned all getting shifted over to the tenth entry in the series.

Anyway, that was my little announcement, just to let you know that I have not dropped the ball, I am just carrying it over into the next fic. I thought everything would flow better if I left off here and opened up an entirely new fic with what I have planned next.

And you may now commence with stabbing me in the groin, because I know a few of you want to.

P.S. Yes, I'm aware that I just had Kol murder random bystanders to a Christina Aguilera song. No, I don't know what's wrong with me either.