après moi, le déluge.

The best man I know & my sweetest angel, I wish I could give you the stars. Everything is brighter with you and I hope these gifts will give you some consolation for my esteemed appreciation of your place in my life. 

An automatic door installation with a remote, so you can dramatically slam doors and shut people out with added convenience. Also without ripping them off the frames.

A personalized whiskey barrel to keep your most prized bourbon and liquors in an aesthetically pleasing way. 

and a pretty bracelet to remind you exactly who you belong to :) 

I also await you in your bedroom with a surprise of my own.

_____________________

I’ve been meaning to start a children’s line, of course, precious Hope will be the first to wear pieces from the collection. 

She instantly whipped the back of her hand against her mouth as she felt a cough rippling, one that once it came up? Splattered blood against her hand, she however, refused to show just how weak she was in the moment and she swallowed any remaining liquid back down. Wiping her her lips now with her palm, she fought herself mentally to stay upright as opposed to hunched over and coughing her guts up. She knew it was inevitable, but for now? She firmly continued to rest her hand against the pillar, eyes now glancing at the flora the Hybrid had surrounded himself in. His words? They went in one ear and out of the other. Not intentionally.. it was more through lack of concentration. Katherine no longer held that same focus as she previously would have done. “What do you think that I want, Klaus?” did he want her to say it out loud? Would that grant him the satisfaction he wanted? 

It’s painfully clear that the mere thought of asking him for her salvation is something that, not even now, in her most drained and desperate and states, she wishes herself to see doing. Klaus would know; after all, her pride might only be outmatched by his own. If he can stop for a second to see beyond the deep grudge he holds for her, he can see the strangely artistic irony in the fact that the centuries of torment have shaped her in his image. In trying to outrun him at every corner, she became him. “A walk-in full of Prada purses, your freedom, a shower perhaps,” he replies nonchalantly, crossing his arms as he leans into a pillar. “Don’t pretend you are not a high maintenance sort, Katerina.” His lips curl ever so slightly, tilting his head as he fixes her intently, like he’s trying to pry that request from her. “The question is, what are you planning to do about the fact that I too am quite high maintenance?” She wouldn’t have come here without a bargaining chip. For sure.

Heidi looked back up to him but this time when he was trying to put her wrist back in it’s binds, she tried her hardest to pull against his grip but he was quite obviously much stronger than her. “Just let me go.” She was now trying to squirm under the binds at every inch of her body to try and find a weak spot.

He faintly raises a brow, already turned sideways to take his leave. Her ‘plea’ sounds so defeated, he wonders if sh can even convince herself. “As Aristotle once said... patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet,” he offers, with a crooked smirk, and then swiftly takes his leave, not in a particular rush.

[TIMESKIP]

It’s actually been a little bit over 24 hours since the last time he’s checked on the young woman. Mostly because he got tangled up in other things, but also because he needed to be sure that the vervain will be out of her system. Pretty ecstatic at the prospect, he opens the doors to the room rather cheerily, definitely bound to startle her. “And so a new dawn is upon us. I trust you had a proper rest, dear guest?”

*Kol gave this to Freya to give to Klaus. She is unaware of the contents with them inside a box*

To Klaus,

Happy Holidays!

Heidi took the hint from the sarcastic nature that she wasn’t going to get an actual answer. Her gaze moved down to her binds on the arm he was untying but didn’t make any attempt to push him away. She looked to his face and instantly knew what that meant but his eyes threw her off. She never knew a vampire to have those eyes but she did remember Kol mentioning something about his brother being a hybrid. Now she was only seeing what that could mean. Her first instinct was to yelp in pain from the initial piercing bite but she managed to use different ways to stop him getting that satisfaction. Her nails on the opposite hand dug in to the chair and her teeth bit hard in to her lip to try and hold in any kind of sound. She knew herself that there should still be vervain in her system. She had it with her morning coffee and by now, by her estimation, it was only just the evening but barely which made her think she had a long night ahead of her.

The familiar sting of vervain dances on the tip of his tongue as soon as he draws in her blood, simply casting out a mild wince in response as his fangs retract, not without a hum that lets his distaste be heard. “It seems that you have been granted the twenty-four-hour stay,” he says, licking away at a crimson stain at the top of his lip. “I apologize for the inadequate conditions. But, for all’s worth, you will not remember it well enough to file a strongly-worded complaint.” He offers her a tight-lighted smile, not at all reassuring, as he sets her wrist back on the armrest and ties the bind again.

“Great…..” Freya sighed. “Don’t hurt her. She’s innocent in all of this drama and doesn’t deserve to suffer anyone’s wrath.” 

“You lot. So eager to make a leap of ill intent,” he sighs, rolling his eyes. “She’ll be free as soon as the vervain is out of her system. Gash free and with a possible souvenir hooked to her belt.”

“Well I do hope Kyd is sitting comfortably for the show.” she scoffed, clearly lacking any amusement within her expressions as she edged herself closer towards the gazebo and once she did, for support she placed her palm onto the surface of the pillar, fully well knowing that she wouldn’t be able to keep herself upright if she wasn’t at least leaning against something fixed. Even in her dishevelled state she couldn’t let herself sink to the level Klaus wanted her at, because that smugness she could already feel waving from his direction? Made her feel physically sick. “So what—” she knew that she had just played right into the palm of his hands, she knew that this right now? Was exactly what he wanted to happen and Katherine had no choice but to bite her pride as well as the instinct of fleeing a million miles away from him. “Finally going to enjoy watching me die?” he hadn’t chased her for five centuries to not get a kick out of it. 

He’s absolutely terrible at hiding the satisfaction that continually oozes from his every pore. For someone like Katherine Pierce, it’s surely an even greater blow than the toxin slowly killing her from the inside. Which must be the exact reason why he’s not even bothering with secrecy. He lets out a faint chuckle, but it’s not that much at her remark as it is at the whole situation. “All these centuries, and yet we barely know each other,” he comments, with a shake of his head and a grin on his face, a grin that slowly falters as he steps closer to her, catching her gaze in a manner as uncomfortable as possible. “Katerina, I do not wish to see you dead. We are past the point of any titillating conclusion at the end of five hundred years. The show must go on.” A fancier way of saying he much preferred the torment he could cause her. For now, at least. “What about you? You couldn’t have come all this way just to cough out lungs at my feet. What do you want?”

Perhaps there is a worry in her that her presence alone in Mystic Falls will not keep him there. With his siblings gone, his daughter away with Hayley there was no telling how long he’d stay here. She had grown tired of being abandoned but no matter how many times he’d done it, she’d always fall back to him. Still, she was determined that the next time he left she would go with him. There was little that kept her in the confines of Mystic Falls and perhaps her store needed expanding. No matter the feat, she would follow him to the ends of the earth as promises nearly a thousand years ago. 

Just as she is about to snatch the trinket from his arms she is accompanied by the welcoming heat of his body and the thought briefly leaves her. How she longed to be this close to him again, it had been a long month or two with him gone. “Exceedingly.” She admits as she sports a convenient pout on her lips. Her hands fall lightly on his chest, fingertips grazing the fabric nonchalantly. “If I knew you were returning today I would have worn something much more presentable or perhaps..much less.” 

He doesn’t know what to make of the place he’s in right that very moment. With concern for Hope always on his mind and an apparent freedom that he doesn’t know what to make of, he’s somewhere between a rock and a hard place. But the one thing he can’t doubt is that the ball will always be in his court. He cannot afford believing that all the excitement and pyres Aurora awakens in him could push him over an unwanted edge. Responsibility’s something he’s never really excelled at, but which he’s grown into over the years.

A smirk curves the corners of his lips, his hands glossing over hers as they rest on his chest, head tipping in slightly closer. “For all’s worth, I prefer the candidness,” he murmurs, fingers trailing along her arm toward her hair, where they combed through some of her soft, red tresses. “And... it’s never too late for such a feat.” He slightly purrs as he speaks, tightening his grip around her waist and lifting her against him. “Like the good, simpler times.” He claws at the fabric donning her back and presses his lips against hers, a kiss through which flows a fervent impatience, like they were still the youthful lovers unmarked by a cruel passage of time.

“So this is more about you and Kol than it is about the girl?” Yet another person caught in the middle of a Mikaelson family squabble. 

“Tragic, I know,” he responds, tossing a leg over his knee. “But something that could have easily been avoided if Kol only knew how to keep his hand out of pots with boiling water.”

She closed her mouth like instructed but there was a slightly annoyed exhale of air through her nose. At his sudden movement to grip the armrests, Heidi leaned back further but kept her eyes firmly on him. She didn’t try to squirm out of this, she knew there was no point. Even if she did manage to get out of this, she couldn’t outrun him - not with her legs and she knew that. She swallowed back only a small amount of her fear to be able to speak. “What are you going to do?” All she could think was: Was this all just karma for everything her family had done to people?

“Would you prefer the list to be chronological or according to dramatic level?” He bolts his brows, offering a small, catty smirk that’s very telling of the fact that he’s not planning on divulging the exactness of his ploy. Letting his gaze falter, he looks down at her hands, straightening slightly, just enough to untie one of her wrists. “But, for the sake of conversation, I will give away my immediate aim.” His fingers curl, tightly, around her wrist as he lifts it. “I have to first check for any unwanted intoxication, if you know what I mean.” The dark veins take root underneath his eyes, which fill with blackness in the whites and a glowing gold in his irises. As soon as his fangs extend, he pierces her wrist, not particularly delicately either.