The Good Daughter

Forty three

I pushed myself through Tyler's window. His bed was empty, the comforter gone.

"Couldn't sleep?"

There he was.

In the corner, sitting on the floor.

"Not very well."

"My bed is too soft." He pushed his blanket off. "Would've thought Klaus and Elijah wouldn't let you out of their sight."

"They were smothering me." I moved over to him and sat down. "Elijah wants one of them to guard me every time I step out the door. It's infuriating."

"And you snuck out to come see me."

"You're the only one who understands."

He stared at the floor and I was grateful for the silence. "What do we do now?"

"What's expected of us. We go back to school and put on a smile like everything's okay. If we tell the lie long enough, we'll actually start to believe it."

"But we're not."

"I know that. You know that. They don't."

He took my hand, threading our fingers together.

"They're going to ask. They're going to want every little detail, how hurt you or I were. They'll press until you snap. Don't tell them anything. It doesn't help and all you'll get is their pity. We're wounded in their eyes. Forever."

"That's all my mom has when she looks at me. Pity. I hate it."

"Same with the Mikaelsons." Now all of them are awake, including an additionally overprotective Kol. He'd have to be brought up to speed on the deal for Tyler.

He was staring at the floor, eyes unfocused and somewhere else.

I tugged the sleeve of his shirt up and inspected his arm. "You need human blood, you'll heal slowly without it."

My bite mark was still there.

"Speak for yourself." He was back, he brushed a knuckle against the bruise I knew was on my cheek.

"Can't find it in myself to stomach it."

"What's the alternative?"

Becoming a ripper. "My skin won't start to gray for a couple of days, and a few more past that... well my skin will feel like sandpaper and I'll not be able to move."

I could usually last a full week without blood, that's only if I already had a healthy diet of it before. This time I'd gone weeks on the barest amount, far less than I've ever had, even when I was on the run.

"Desiccation, right?"

"Yes, that's why that man always gave us our mouthful every day. To keep us from it. We wouldn't have been any use to him like that."

"Sounds horrible."

"It is. That's what happens when we go in those coffins. The daggers, they accelerate the process."

"The daggers don't kill them, do they? There really is no way to kill the Originals."

"Don't you think if there was one, someone would've used it by now? A gaggle of teenagers aren't going to do what stronger enemies have tried for a thousand years."

"You're not angry at me for wanting them dead?"

I bumped my shoulder against his. "I'd have no friends if I hated everyone who hated them."

He twisted our interlocked hands, tracing the band of my ring with his thumb. "What did you mean? On the first day when you told the man that you wanted to see how he compared to Klaus."

I swallowed. "I was trying to goad him."

"It didn't seem like a lie."

"Then I was convincing. Leave it be, Tyler."

"He tortured you, didn't he?" There it was. Those damn words. "That's why you never backed down, even after he'd hurt you. You'd done it all before."

I refused to look at him, and I stood, moving away. "I've had a long life, full of pain."

"But Klaus is your family. He tortured you. How could he do that to you?"

"I asked him to."

He stood as well. "You what?"

"I needed to learn how to be strong." Nik, he understood. That's the only reason he ever agreed to it in the first place.

And he never flaunted it.

Never gloated.

Elijah didn't know. No one did.

He'd take me far into the Louisiana countryside, and we would practice during the night, when everyone else slept. He'd push me until I couldn't anymore and then push further.

Then he'd feed me blood until the marks were gone.

"You won't breathe a word of it to anyone. Especially Elijah." If he ever found out, I'm not sure what he'd do. "I'm serious. I'll never speak to you again."

"I won't."

Good. That was good. "Now, you need to drink human blood."