The Devil In Me

Chapter 35

Elijah let go his hand, as though it were scorched and stepped back, his face draining of colour.

"How is it possible, it cannot be..." he muttered.

The figure standing over him was thin, wryly, his threadbare clothes blowing in the wind. His face was far from clean, his blonde curls longer, framing his hard cheekbones, pulled back and tied by a piece of string. His face was partially concealed by a thick beard, it hid the hollowness of his jaw, and the blue of his eyes, once so vibrant seemed dimmed, as a watercolour brush dipped in murky water.

Klaus watched him curiously, his head to the side. Elijah stared at him, his mind spinning. He reached out an unsteady hand and touched his brother hesitantly on the arm. Klaus's brow crinkled as he watched the movement, yet, he remained silent. His face was set, expressionless, and Elijah wondered at the man before him. A spectre he was not, yet he was not his brother either.

"You... you are dead." Elijah whispered. Klaus frowned at him.

"Most days, I am sure I agree with you." Klaus said quietly, stepping back as Elijah stood briefly, then sank down onto a wooden crate, unable to tear his eyes from the ghost before him. The sounds and smells around them had faded away, and the two men could not drag their eyes from each other. Elijah was struck by the difference in his brother. Gone was the confident grin, the wicked mischievousness that Niklaus had always possessed, drawing men and women alike. In it's place was a vacancy, a hollow quality that Elijah longed to shake off. His blue eyes were clouded and without expression, his face hardened by the time, the lines more clear, even his form seemed stripped of any softness or comfort.

"I came to find you, in France, I searched for months... I found your name on a list of the deceased. It said you had died of disease. I took your personal possessions back to England" Elijah schooled his voice and spoke into the charged silence. Klaus leant back against the wall of the alley, his eyes drifting occasionally to it's mouth, always watchful. He nodded slightly, before speaking.

"I met an old man in that village... he was dying, and the local authorities were seizing lands from people, who did not have a son present to inherit them. With most of France's sons at war, you see the profit they were making. We swapped identities, so that it would not be revealed that he had died before his son came home..."

"So, you were there, in that village?"

"I believe so, I was there for a while. I told him my identity was more of a burden than a gift, but he was grateful for it at any rate." Klaus said.

"He had your personal possessions...a letter" At these words, Elijah saw a muscle tick in his brother's jaw, a flash of a memory come over his face, before the blankness returned.

"There have been a great many letters over the years, more than I can count, to be honest."

"Why did you not send any?" Klaus looked at Elijah steadily, unblinking, and Elijah saw it them, the chasm of emptiness that yawned there, in those eyes.

"Why did you come for me, brother?" Klaus's voice, sounding almost like a stranger in it's tone, pulled him back, as his hollow eyes searched his.

"Because, you are a free man... your name is clear" Elijah said, clearing his throat, and his eyes absorbed with this Klaus, this new man who seemed to familiar, yet so changed at the same instant.

Klaus took the news quietly, showing barely a sign of the significance of the news, and Elijah was unable to tell if his brother cared or not.

"In that case, why are we sitting in this alley, let us go and have a drink somewhere a little nicer, at your expense of course." Klaus joked, his laugh bitter and devoid of emotion as he went to one of the bodies, pulling Elijah's money and other stolen pieces from his pocket, scraping the filthiness off them.