Maybe in another life, Klaus Mikaelson wouldn't be a monster.
Perhaps, if his father hadn't struck him down as a mere child, for being weak, he could know not to utter that word with such repulsion now.
He knows his faults, knows that family is to be cherished, and rarely ever do those occur who would embrace flawed like him. But there is no power to be found in loving, and weakness was a luxury the starved of love couldn't afford.
Family is power, his brother's voice would ring in his ears. And maybe that made Elijah the stupidest of them all. To give him his unfiltered love. To think him capable or deserving of redemption.
Maybe, family is power but it would be centuries before the treachery in his blood would let him learn that.
And, Avra...
She was a vampire too, just better than all of them. The best of them. They had been partners for a while, unafraid and unstoppable but those times were long gone.
It had been centuries since he and his brother had fallen for her, centuries since every inch of her face was etched into their memory, centuries since the Mikaelsons were drunk on the joy of life that she radiated and had been kind enough to share with monsters like them. Then, he had known that he would commit a crime, one too many for her, and she would leave. She didn't care much for his redemption, but, he knew she would come back. She had to.
Klaus was a cruel, cruel man who did not deserve much, but he prayed to the heavens and whatever gods that would listen that she was included in the much.
A thousand years later, Mikael was still ruining his life. Running him off the edge of sanity to keel over into the depths of hell.
No, not just through his chase of him to the ends of the Earth, but he was present in every fiber of his being. His cruelty, his anger, his rage. And every day Niklaus wishes he could escape him.
However, do you escape your own unkind shadow though?
The name he carried with such pride, Niklaus Mikaelson was but his irate claws digging into his flesh, a reminder of who he could never be again and perchance, never had been.
Niklaus would never be again, and in his place stood, Klaus Mikaelson, the monster. The very rage and blood of Mikael, the Viking warrior, purged of mercy. Everything the gentle abused human hadn't been.
With every step he took, he was inching closer to his father's shadow.
Maybe, he could have even been human, six feet under as he deserved, then why was he fighting every damn day to survive? Because that is all he knew and would ever know.
No asylum is granted to monsters and when his time comes he would grace the ground as everything his father made him, and everything he didn't want to be.
He knows his faults, knows of his monstrous nature.
But he would not be forgotten, erased from history, as his father had willed it so. He would never concede to the man's wish.
They would chant his name in the streets, if not of praise then of folly. He would be remembered.
Ah, Niklaus Mikaelson, the victor of all the bereaved.
He would be a king, everything his father wasn't.
In this life, this was the path chosen for him and that he had chosen for himself.
But maybe in another life, he could love and be loved.
*
Avra was tired.
She was tired of this family, of Klaus, of vampirism, of eternity.
She had grieved so many times, for so many people. She was just fucking tired of grief. She had grieved for the girl she had been, her human life, her relationships, Kol, Elijah, Finn, Rebekah, and even Klaus over the centuries.
The family she had desperately wanted to return to maybe just wasn't worth it.
If grief was the price to be paid for love, she wasn't sure if she wanted to love anymore.
Sometimes, on odd days, her mind drifts and she is too tired to restrain it, she wishes she was human. It was a dangerous line of thought, for it gave her hope- for a better life.
Somedays, she wishes she could leave everything behind, this family.
Maybe her fate would have been kinder then.
But no, she was to be forever entangled in the cruel web of the Mikaelsons.