The Prodigal Son II

Bonnie bit her lip as she worked, wanting desperately to say something but not daring to air the topic of her outburst – her betrayal – under the watchful eyes of Klaus. Who looked, no holds barred, ready to snap her neck the second she did anything he considered threatening.

She wasn't privy to why everyone in the Mikaelson house was so on edge and had no thoughts of broaching the topic, but she desperately wanted to know why Lena was so tense, why her eyes were red and puffy as she avoided making eye contact with her, why she flinched as though Bonnie was about to hit her when she'd lifted her hands up to her head to begin her diagnostics.

She wanted to think that Lena knew that she would never, ever hurt her, but Bonnie had a sinking feeling that the terrible things she had said had been enough.

(She wanted to cry when she realised there was nothing she could do.)

"I can't remove it," Bonnie admitted reluctantly, grimacing surreptitiously as she avoided Klaus' suddenly narrowed eyes.

"Are you a witch or aren't you?" He asked sharply, impatiently, stalking the length of the room like a caged wolf.

"It's not that easy," Bonnie replied in a clipped tone. "Whoever cast this spell went beyond out of their way to make sure only they could undo it. If I tried to force it the backlash could hurt Lena and that's not an option."

"It's fine, Nik," Lena murmured, looking uncomfortable in her own skin at the thought of what might happen if Bonnie tried to overpower the spell with force. "Really."

Klaus, Bonnie could tell, was not pleased. He leaned back against the wall churlishly, his shoulders set in the stance of an irritated predator. Bonnie shivered as she turned back to her grimoire, flipping through the pages as though looking for something while she really took a moment to think.

Lena was cursed. Not enchanted, not spelled, not any kind of benign or neutral type of magic; she had been cursed by a witch and that curse ate up her memories and fought her when the object of them resurfaced.

The spell had grown weaker but hadn't altogether disappeared when said object was gruesomely killed in a medieval death match. Why would it grow weaker and not die out completely? It didn't make sense. It couldn't be both dependant on the object's life and independent of it once the object died at the same time, that simply wasn't how spells worked.

If (from what Bonnie understood) said object was related to Lena's Original Vampires, didn't it stand to follow that-

"Hey," Bonnie said slowly, deciding that this angle was worth exploring even at the cost of having to speak to a riled Klaus, "You Originals… does, um, removal of your heart kill you?"

Klaus' eyes flashed dangerously.

"Would you like to find out, witch?" Someone else asked – the crazy brother Lena hadn't invited into the house, looking rather worse for wear, Bonnie thought, shivering. The one that was like a storm and something worse than the others, something dangerous. And more dangerous still, looking utterly ravenous.

"I just don't understand…" She said carefully, wishing Lena would just look at her because she felt lost, floundering without Lena's support behind her. "If he was related to you, how were you able to… well, you know."

"He wasn't like us," Kol dismissed sharply, "and you're not here to ask questions."

Bonnie's lips pressed into a thin line.

"I only ask because the spell seems to have been anchored to him," she said, irritated, "but it's still-"

"Active," Kol finished, his expression inscrutable. Not that Bonnie expected to read his expressions anyway, but it seemed to her as though his face had grown shuttered, as though a mask had slipped over it.

It was Klaus that moved first, gone in a flash as Kol lingered, his eyes fixed on Lena, before he too left the room.

"Bonnie," Lena started, her face warring with indecision.

Bonnie's heart leapt to her throat-

Indecision won out.

Lena fled.

(When, Bonnie wondered, feeling strangely hollow, had it come to this?)

I ran after Nik, after Kol. How long had it been since we'd seen Henrik? Since Nik had been forced to… subdue Kol and feed him his blood to cure him of the werewolf venom. I hadn't been privy to all that had happened, but judging from the blood on Kol's clothes and the darkness lingering in his eyes, whatever he had seen had not been pretty. And from Nik's expression, what Kol had done was likely a thousand times worse.

Nik and Kol were standing over the coffin when I walked into the room, gazing down at… at the body that lay within looking almost relieved.

He was grey, ashen grey, deathly pale, with fine veins too, too apparent on his still, still face.

Unmoving.

"It can't have been anchored to him, then," Kol muttered, something rough behind the words. "The witch will have to try again and get it right this time."

He stalked off before Nik or I could reply, no doubt heading back to Bonnie to inform her that her theory was rubbish. (I could almost picture the mean sneer that would play across his face, the tense lines of his shoulders that gave away that his impatience wasn't truly with her, but rather the carry-over of what he had done).

"Nik," I began, biting my lip unsurely. I wanted to go to him, to comfort him, but with all that had been happening and his determination to see my memories returned, I didn't dare.

He seemed to view the curse that tampered with my memories as violation, was furious that someone had been able to do it and doubly furious that he hadn't managed to have it lifted yet. In a way, he was more effected by the curse than I was. Did I want the horrible, throbbing headaches gone? Of course. But not as much as Nik and his pride wanted it fixed.

He stood abruptly and then-

And then I was screaming his name as his neck was snapped, the grey, apparently not dead form of Hal – of Henrik, why did his name always feel so far away? – standing behind him. Looming.

"Saoirse," he said, his voice hoarse and weak despite the note of relief, of thanks, of joy that I didn't understand. "Saoirse, Lena. Remember."

A terrible, terrible scream echoed in the bowels of the Mikaelson house, and then-

Silence.

New Orleans, Present Day

"Sorry, was I supposed to be impressed?" Caroline asked with a laugh, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder in clear condescension (and, coincidentally, in a movement that best complimented the graceful lines of her excellent posture and slim figure).

A wide smile, all teeth, spread slowly over his face.

"You're not from around here," he said, and if Caroline had given a single fuck she might have paused at the implied so I'm going to give you one more chance to try that again. But she didn't, so she scoffed.

"What gave it away, Captain Obvious? Was it the way I asked the bartender for directions?" She snarked, projecting wide eyes and innocence in dramatic contrast to her acerbic words. "Or maybe the fact that I'm walking around with this chump tourist map?"

Someone in the background let loose a short laugh, which Caroline let slide because, well, yeah, she was pretty hilarious, thanks.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" He asked smoothly, all charm and the kind of hardly understated power that should have appealed to a baby vampire such as herself.

"It's… none of your business," she returned sweetly, sweeter than sugar, than everything nice, just wide baby blue eyes and the kind of pout bad boys write songs about. "You're Marcel, aren't you? Fresh Prince of the Quarter or whatever? Don't you have better things to do than chatting up a high school senior visiting Tulane?"

"King of the Quarter, baby girl," he corrected casually, too casually. Please. Caroline had to schmooze around with the Moms of the Founding Families during pageant season. This guy? He had a lot to learn.

She adopted a look of childish surprise.

"King?" Caroline parroted neatly, brushing a stray strand of hair behind her ear in a 'shy' gesture. "I'm sooooo sorry, Mr. Klaus, sir. I didn't know you were already in town."

She stuck out her hand with guileless charm, offering it to Marcel (she knew full well who he was – how, she couldn't say, but she did).

"Caroline. I've been sent by the Prince to ensure the mansion is ready for my lady's arrival," she said idly, as though she were not dropping the biggest bomb to rock this supernaturally-challenged town since Katrina. "The entire court will be in attendance of course; our usual accommodations at the Mikaelson house will be satisfactory."

God, it felt good to be a bitch. Even if it was for people she didn't know, repeating a message she didn't care about.

"Caroline, right?" The dude asked, obviously trying some lame soccer mom power play. What was next, 'sweetie'? She scoffed.

"Don't wear it out," she said easily, turning up her patented Miss Mystic Falls smile.

He looked a little disarmed despite himself – then focused.

"You run back to your lady and tell her that if she wants to come into my town with her entourage and bring Mikaelsons in her wake, she can come have a chat with me in person. Alright?"

Caroline had no idea why she was there, other than some odd compulsion making her be there, delivering this message, but to be honest, she was starting to really have some fun.

Her beatific smile widened into a grin, all teeth.

Mystic Falls

When they arrived, Saoirse was gone. Elijah watched implacably as Kol roared in fury, slamming his fist into the wall in a fit of rage, looking more animal than man.

It had been Elijah, in the end, that had subdued Kol long enough after his mad killing spree for Niklaus to force his blood down their brother's throat.

And now this, Elijah thought to himself, mouth straightening into a grim line. Their brother, thought dead a millennium, absconded with their Saoirse. Their Saoirse, lesser than she was in the doppelganger's body, not quite all that their Saoirse was, though the heart and soul of her was the same. And now she was gone, slipped through their fingers once more.

In some dark part of his heart, Elijah mused to himself, as he watched Niklaus rage alongside Kol, he was very well aware that he had already done what he would not have thought himself capable of doing and had chosen Saoirse over this man that was Henrik and wasn't. His priorities were as they had been for centuries. If once he would have traded Saoirse's life for his youngest brother's, now, he admitted to himself, he would not. Could not.

Henrik was a child that perished a thousand years ago. Saoirse was silken thread, stitching his family together. Holding even through their disagreements, decade long spats and century long daggering.

Watching his brothers come undone at the seams in fury, he thought that perhaps after so long she was the very thread holding them together.

"What will you do with Henrik?" he asked Niklaus calmly, the question cutting through the tension like a knife. Not in censure – simply because for all that his decision was made, he wished to hear it from Niklaus' own mouth. From Niklaus, who was apparently more Henrik's flesh and blood than any of them had ever been.

The corners of his brother's mouth turned down in a savage scowl.

"He has taken Saoirse," Niklaus uttered, each syllable saturated in his fury. "Our brother died a boy. Whatever conjuring our enemies have created to steal her away – it is no blood of mine."

Something didn't quite sit right for him, but Elijah nodded anyway.

"As you say," he heard himself agree distantly.

He was distracted by the wild look in Kol's eye as he tore out of the room, apparently done waiting. Distracted and concerned.

"Let's go," Nik snarled, shoulders set with purpose.

As he had done for so many centuries, for at least once more, Elijah followed.

Elsewhere, all too aware that his time was running short, Henrik was praying.

"Why are you doing this?" Lena asked him, the doppelganger's tear-stained face gazing up at him.

He hushed her tenderly, lovingly.

"Just a little longer, a little farther, lady mine," he murmured, a promise she couldn't, perhaps would never understand. "You've done so well so far. It's almost over."

This was the last night in this timeline in which she was at risk. The final night. The penultimate threat. A thousand years he'd kept his vigil like a holy mission with religious, fanatical fervour. Everything he had done led to this.

Saoirse didn't understand how delicate her position was. Henrik did. He remembered. When her father had brought her into this world he had shifted the very balance of the multiverse to do so, had created a new reality in which Henrik, son of Mikael, and Kathleen Saoirse Darrow coexisted in every single world in which they had ever drawn breath, destined to cross paths with one another in some manner or another, as humans, as fae, as vampires, as any combination of a thousand different beings. Destined.

Henrik had been touched by the father's magic (by Saoirse's latent magic, manipulated by the cù-sìth dwelling in her soul) and it had awoken in him the shared memory of his other existences.

He had remembered her before he met her, remembered every possibility of her presence, remembered each time she had been stolen away by the magic that brought her. He remembered, though for him, in this timeline, it hadn't occurred, how she had been taken away from him. He remembered the life in which she had been turned, in which she was a vampire, beautiful and terrible, flush with fae blood and the power of night. When he had been her progeny, her Childe, and she the Mistress of Death. He remembered many worlds, versions of himself left to despair in her wake to the benefit of his other selves. He remembered being Henrik that lost Saoirse, and being Henrik that gained Saoirse from the failures of other Henriks.

He'd nearly died to remember, but Saoirse had saved him then too.

He needed this to work. He needed her to stay. He had come too far, worked for too long, to lose her now.

"Remove the spell," he commanded breathlessly as he bundled her into a seat, let her clutch her head there in agony for just a little bit longer.

Maria, the eldest of his twin witches, nodded sharply and clasped her hands with her sister, Valeria's, as they began to chant the spell that would free Saoirse from their work.

It took mere moments before she came undone in his arms, her head lolling back in relief at the pressure lifted from her brain.

"Now, you remember," Henrik murmured, the spell that enabled him to compel her ended, and in the doppelganger's face, his Saoirse came to life.

"Henrik?" I croaked, hardly daring to touch his face to see if he was real. He had been dead. Not truly dead, but I hadn't known that then.

A gentle smile crossed his features – and for a moment he was so like Niklaus that it nearly took my breath away.

"Forgive me, lady mine," he said, "I've done you great injury."

I thought he had died.

"Oh, Henrik," I cried, flinging my arms around him. "It's nothing. It's nothing."

He'd made me forget him. It didn't matter. Any number of headaches was worth getting to see him alive again – the thought that I'd nearly lost him without even fully realising what was being lost. My stomach churned at the very thought.

"But why, Henrik," I asked, drawing back, pure puzzlement, not a hint of reproach on my features. "Why did you kidnap me? Why hide yourself at all? You've never – in all my dreaming, you've never once said why we couldn't…"

Maybe it was presumptuous of me, to say we when I meant why Henrik could not be reunited with his flesh and blood, but-

"Why we couldn't be together, all of us?"

I'd spent a lifetime, longer, with them in what I'd dreamt so far and they'd known me for longer that I had known them and the way they treated me – I really felt, presumptuous or not, that I was one of them.

Henrik sighed, and it was such a wistful, age-old sound that I felt it like a pang in my heart.

"Perhaps this might wait until my brothers catch up," he requested easily, his expression uncharacteristically solemn for a moment as he gazed in the direction of the door.

"And Rebekah?" I asked curiously.

"My dear sister," he said quietly. "No, it will be Nik and 'Lijah and Kol that come. Even after all these years, dear Bekah is so soft still. Better she hear it first with them beside her, from their own words."

Bekah was still so very much a girl, dreaming of love, perhaps spoiled by her power, but no less vulnerable for it. That she should miss whatever history Henrik had to relate to us, though, didn't sit well with me.

"Even her youngest brother is overprotective," I teased lightly, knowing, trusting that despite Elena's face in place of mine he would still pick up on the question there, the dissatisfaction with Rebekah's exclusion.

Henrik, I thought as he sighed, might truly know me the best out of anyone.

"Better for both of us, then," he allowed magnanimously, drawing an arm around my shoulders with casual ease that belied, ironically, the tense set of his own.

My mind was swimming with things that had been 'forgotten.'

I'd thought him dead, I'd realised, seeing him lie there like any other vampire. Because I hadn't been able to remember what a dead Original looked like. He wasn't even an Original in the first place – if he died, would he have died in the same way?

"I can hear you thinking," he remarked wryly, the hint of a distracted smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "What is my lady pondering that makes her scowl so fiercely?"

I looked up at him unsurely, searching for some reassurance I didn't dare ask for aloud-

What else had you taken from me?

But it was Henrik, of course I trusted him, he was one of mine, he'd always been so, through the ages my sword, my shield, and I his hearth and home.

If I couldn't trust him, who could I trust?

"Our guests have arrived," Henrik said suddenly, his eyes fixed on something – someone behind me.

"Brother," Nik greeted – I whipped around to face him, alarmed by the false warmth and promise of pain there – as he walked up, flanked by Elijah and Kol.

(I had always wanted to see them a united front, walking side by side into whatever danger fate had thrust upon them – but not like this, not against Henrik, Henrik who had always been so sweet and kind and loyal; who had done everything for them. For me.)

"It's a long story, Nik," Henrik said instead of responding in kind, "but if you'll hear it, I will tell it. And perhaps then many things will become clear…"

This was a turning point, I could feel it in the marrow of my bones. The answers I'd sought for so long, finally made clear. No secrets between myself and Nik. I would beg his forgiveness. I would tell him I had known Henrik was alive – though I could not tell him. At least, once Henrik spoke his peace, I would at last know why.

A stiff nod was all the response Henrik got from Nik, but it was enough.

He led us to the living room of the house we were in, a lavishly furnished place one would never have guessed at from the plain, cookie-cutter outside, his base in Mystic Falls, and then, without preamble or a hint of hesitation, he began his tale.

"Before I say anything else, know that Saoirse could not apprise you to my condition on pain of death – her own, sometimes your's, sometimes Kol's – it changes, you see, with the timeline. I am Henrik, your brother. I am also Henrik, world-walker, mortal, immortal, vampire, fae. I am the sum of the memory of all of my incarnations, scattered across worlds, existing in countless timelines. Saoirse may be tied to our family, to you, but she and I have walked ages together you will never know. And that is where this tale begins… with the fever that nearly killed me, not a fever at all but the sudden collision of a thousand different versions of myself, entire lives, generations of myself, crammed inside my head at once and with them absolute knowledge of every possible future Saoirse would create.

It took me weeks to sort through all the memories. And when I did… I saw myself die to the wolves. And then, I saw myself live.

I followed that train of thought, dug deeper and deeper into the tangled strands of what might be and what could be, and the further I cast my net the more it became terribly clear what must be done.

In each and every timeline in which I lived, in which I, with Ayanna's help became vampire… my continued existence was paid for in Saoirse's blood, in my brothers' blood. It were as though I were cursed – to die a mortal or bear calamity to your door. So I dove deeper, untangled the web of the future, and found the answer.

I confess, the danger of death passed long ago. But to lose Saoirse to some other world forever, that I could not risk. So I took preventative measures. I ensured her compliance on pain of… well, your deaths. Confused as she is at present, I had my witches spell her while she was weakened in the doppelgangers form and compelled her silence. That is lifted now – she was growing to strong and fighting the compulsion. I regret," he said, turning to me, "the pain I have caused you. Saoirse."

I swallowed, unable to tear my eyes away from him, my brain stalling on what he was saying about – timelines and worlds.

Worlds. I had come from a different world. If Father was to be believed (which I fervently thought he was), he had moved me between worlds not once, but twice.

Hearing Henrik call me Saoirse, not his fair Kate, was somehow eye opening.

"Yes," he hummed almost thoughtfully. "You could say that everything that has happened until today has happened only because I allowed it, because I guided you along this path, to bring you to this moment. I have set you in motion as a pawn on the board, Saoirse, let you think you were moving yourself, to bring you here, now."

"And if you are some grand puppet master, little brother," Kol called out, voice scathing, "did you foresee this meeting? Do you know what little agreement your older brothers have come to in regards to your… appearance?"

I had never seen Elijah so tense, but he did not contradict what was very clearly a threat.

Nik looked half animal, ready to lunge.

Henrik, though, smiled.

"Yes, there is the matter of your plan to kill me," he allowed easily, shrugging. "You think me some conjuration raised to destroy you, but I am no ghost, Kol. I am the Prince of the Eastern Court. My every step has been chronicled in history. 'Seek and ye shall find.' I am no apparition. You'll find plenty of proof – but perhaps you might begin here in Mystic Falls, where all of this began."

His smile was perfectly genial, but there was tension in his frame too, and his eyes were nearly narrowed to slits.

"You remember the caves, don't you?" He asked lightly. "Your story is written there – and so is mine."

I was immediately assaulted with memories of the show – pictures of cave paintings on a cell phone, Rebekah's face of utter betrayal, of denial.

This would be an unravelling. Bekah couldn't-

But that was why Henrik had insisted on leaving her out.

Bekah couldn't be there to see those paintings – to find out what had really happened between Nik and their mother. Kol couldn't care less about his mother, not after what I had told them of her. Elijah wouldn't fault Nik for it either. Bekah was the only one that would be, well…

I nearly stumbled into Kol when he tugged me to him, not having fully registered it when he took my arm to pull me away from Henrik.

"Take us to your caves, then," Kol said shortly. (I wondered rather desperately what he was thinking). "And then, if your tale is… believable, we'll suspend our disbelief and you will tell us everything."

The ghost of a smile touched Henrik's mouth.

"As you say," he said, and with only a split second of hesitation added, "brother."

Silence reigned.

Nik – raging, wrathful tempest Nik – turned sharply on his heel and stormed out.

Elijah followed, ensuring that Kol did not act rashly with blank, implacable direction, guiding Saoirse out along with him with his hand on the small of her back.

Henrik watched them go for a moment, just for a moment.

"Not the welcome home I'd hoped for," he muttered, a cold, empty sort of amusement colouring the words, "but perhaps the one I deserve."

This time, though – this time, he took a tentative step forward, then another, then another, and then he wasn't watching them from the shadows, watching them leave without ever knowing he had been there, that he was alive. This time, he was catching up, following behind them – the last son of Mikael, at last come home.

To be continued in Henrik's Tale.

This chapter is for BlondeAli, who made my day with an encouraging PM shortly before I finished this chapter. Thanks again!

If you like this story, please review! Your thoughts keep me going!