Saved By A Mikaelson (Loving a Mikaelson AU)

Chapter 26: Exploring

Chapter 26: Exploring

Song: Devil's Backbone- The Civil Wars

"She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something."

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Before anything else, I decide to go to a room that I've already been before. A room I can't seem to get out of my mind.

Not the kitchen, or the living room, or one of those mysterious rooms where all the furniture is covered.

A room full of feeling. Passion and pain. Emotion and control, and just... Power.

If I were to say that there's a room like that in the place I'm living to someone on the street, they would call me crazy or some insane romantic. But there really is such a place in this huge house.

Only one place.

The art room.

I love it. I love the colour and the incredible feelings that are put into every piece. Every sketch, every painting and doodle there is emotion surgining within. Raw emotion through the dyes on the canvas and the pen on the paper.

I could never create something like that. I wish I could do the things in this room, but I'm not even able to dream that vastly.

In a great number of the paintings, there are the initials k.m in the bottom right corner. I could assume these are Kol's work, but something makes me think better of it. Kol honestly just doesn't seem the type. It could be the other brother - Niklaus. I've heard Kol mention him by the name of Klaus before, it seems to be the name he prefers. These could very well be his doing.

I'm impressed.

Klaus did, however, threaten to kill me that first night I was here, so I wouldn't go as far to say I have some new-found respect for him, but some admiration for his work is definitely there.

I don't dare touch anything, but I don't mind to sit on the floor, looking around at the room, just for a while. It's nice.

Eventually the floor does get too cold and hard for me to bare anymore, and my eyes have seemed to gaze and marvel at every flourish of every single brushstroke, and I decide it's time to move on and explore more of the house.

And then maybe make something to eat.

I can't help myself, and I almost get carried away with the exploring, I manage to get an inside look at every bathroom, bedroom, spare room, and even the rooms filled solely to hold one thing like a room full of television sets. There's even an entire ballroom like one from a fairytale or romance movie. I guess this is what it's like to be completely rich?

I feel like a princess to even be walking into some of the rooms. There are some rooms that don't even have a purpose yet and are completely empty - white walls and all.

There's even a sort-of library, a room filled with bookshelves. Almost all of the shelves contain mass numbers of books of every genre. One of the shelves is even dedicated to be filled to the top with nothing but family photo albums and scrapbooks.

Out of curiosity, I pick up a particular dusty album, flipping to a random page.

Something about the pictures, jumps out at me, striking me as odd. Most of them are black and white or in sepia, and look very old. And yet, the family in the photographs are most definitely the Mikaelsons. I see Kol and Elijah and Klaus, a blonde who I assume is Rebekah, and there are even pictures of the other brothers - Henrik and Finn, and their parents. A few of them look like they were taken at fancy parties, in which each of the family members holds a glass of champagne.

How strange.

I could assume that they were taken at some annual decade themed event that they attended over the years, or that these are pictures of some ancestors they bare resemblance to, but the pictures are too realistic to be faked and the similarities are too striking for it to not actually be them.

The pieces to Kol's puzzle, yet again, aren't adding up at all. I want answers. Instead of staying in the room to look at the pictures a little longer or taking one of the albums with me, I take a few of the photographs from behind their transparent films, slipping them into my inner jacket pocket. I'll get the answers I want later. Maybe if Kol won't give them to me, I'll be forced to ask Klaus - if that's what it comes to. Kol's already asked me not to do so, but do I even have a choice anymore? All this stuff is just too much. Nothing about his family makes sense. The secrets and the lying. It's all so weird...

I find myself counting up all the things about Kol that I'd questioned and he'd shrugged off:

The conversation between him and Klaus that I heard from the balcony.

Klaus called me a human, and mentioned daggers and killing.

These old family pictures.

The way Kol seemed so reluctant to let me open the fridge.

He came right out and told me he couldn't say the whole truth about how his brother died, or any of his family, really.

The way he knows everything about me, my darkest secrets, and leaped at the chance to "save me," even when he didn't even know who I was.

The way when Elijah, Klaus, or even Kol say things to me, it's like they're in on an inside joke that I don't seem to get.

None of it makes sense. Maybe I'm over-analyzing this stuff, but it's just all so strange. I'll have to find out the truth before I get myself even further into this mess. No matter who I have to hurt. All the secrets are killing me, I have to know.

When they all get back, I'll find out the truth, even if I have to get it out of Klaus himself. I'm not afraid to do a little digging. Whatever it takes, I'm ready for it.