Dissipating Darkness [Klaroline]

Chapter 22: Dissipated Darkness

"Quite the party, isn't it, Niklaus?"

I look to my right and see my older brother, Elijah. He's dressed in a fine man's rags, and holds two small glasses that are partially filled with a dark, brown liquid. He inclines one of the glasses toward me.

"Quite." I respond simply. I take the glass into my hand, and bring it up to my mouth. The liquid no longer burns my throat as I swallow it. I barely feel the warmth in the pit of my stomach as it rests there.

"Oh, come on, brother. Mother went out of her way to throw this party in honor of our only sister's birthday."

"I remember the last time mother chose to celebrate Rebekah's birth. It ended in, well, the murder of her children and husband."

"Ah, Niklaus. Let the past be the past. That was merely one step back that led to two steps forward."

"Are you really referring to what we are as two steps forward? We're dead, Elijah." I nod my head in the direction of a woman who has her head thrown back in laughter while she speaks with her party guests on the other side of the make-shift dance floor. "Because that woman acted like she was protecting us, we're cursed for eternity. She took away everything, brother. None of us will ever have an heir. Rebekah, unlike the women around her, will never grow round with our nieces or nephews, and true love will always evade her as she is stuck infinitely at the age of eighteen. She deserves the life she will never get to have."

I see Elijah's mouth form a smirk as he takes a drink from his glass.

"And when did Niklaus Mikaelson start to be an advocate for true love?"

"Easy." I drink the rest of the amber liquid from my glass in one deep swallow before I choose to continue answering Elijah. "When he realized that he would never experience it himself."

Air fills my lungs in a manner more quickly than I can expel it. I've always hated the first few moments of waking up after being killed. Even with that first rush of breath, there's still that small belief, that small piece of hope, that somehow you didn't make it.

As flames rake my throat, and I feel the restraint of a locked door, I know that I have made it. I know that this is not Hell. Hell for me would be much worse.

"Is it true?"

The beautiful voice I've become accustomed to makes me sit up. Or at least try to. I end up leaning into the corner of the stone wall.

"Don't move. It'll just make what you're feeling worse." I hear the heavy door creak open, and footsteps finally stop at the right of me. Caroline gracefully sits down beside of me, and I slowly bring my face up to lean my head against the wall behind me. She is as beautiful as ever.

"Caroline—"

"Is it true?" She interrupts me. I know what she is referring to.

"Yes." I feel my gaze hardened as I find the cement ground interesting.

"Were you thirsty? Angry? I don't understand why." I make eye contact with Caroline, and carefully bring my hand up to stroke her cheek.

"She threatened you."

Caroline's eyes almost turn into slits as she forcefully knocks my hand away from her face.

"Alyssa was just a human, nothing more than a catty cheerleader, and you what? Ripped her throat out because you felt that I was in danger because of her? The only person that has ever posed a danger to me, to any of us, was you. Is you! Damon finally killed Alaric, but not before he told us the truth. All of it."