#nikulaus

accountability. i don't know if that's quite the right word for this. accountability isn't really an emotion. accountability is a bit of humility and vulnerability combined, and klaus understands humility when he needs to. he does hate vulnerability, because vulnerability is a weakness for survival, but accountability is where he struggles the most because it's almost a combination of the two. when confronted with his mistakes and transgressions, the guilt is overwhelming. it's buried, thousands of feet under, but it's there. when elijah or rebekah berate him, he feels it. even if he doesn't express it. even if he explodes and deflects. because that feeling is too large for him to carry. he hates being confronted with the fact that he became his father's son and turned into the very violent and abusive thing he ran from. it might not be on the same scale of hate or violence with which mikael gave him, but it's enough to make him avoid the feeling for eternity. so he gaslights, manipulates, says anything to avoid that reality and change the conversation to make his siblings pine for him instead. as i wrote this, i realized the emotion he hates the most is shame. he hates feeling ashamed. and i could rewrite the paragraph to just say that, but isn't my thought dump on how i reached this conclusion just so much better? anyway, he hates feeling shame for two reasons: (1) accountability - for the reasons listed above, and (2) it reminds him of childhood, when he felt ashamed just for being alive as his father beat him mercilessly.

okay, like really fuck u for this? this answer is hard. in an ideal world, i'd just say he (klaus) lets himself die, but you'd never let me get away with that answer so! it'll probably have to be rebekah. elijah wouldn't even let himself survive in place of rebekah. rebekah is their baby sister. tbh they've all failed her in so many ways, the least klaus could do is give her the chance to keep on living. she's also the only sibling that actually ever stood up for him against mikael. it arguably might kill klaus to lose elijah, as he's the only person who endlessly devotes himself to saving klaus, but he could rationalize elijah's loss if it meant rebekah living. unfortunately, he'd probably wind up abandoning them all (mentally/emotionally) and fuck off somewhere else before any good sacrifices turn bad since elijah can no longer monitor him lmao. edit: this answer changes between my verses, in tvd he struggles more with his bias towards rebekah and elijah. finn is an unexplored relationship, and kol & klaus deserve more attention too. that being said, the answer would be the same. rebekah.

IT WAS LIKE LOOKING INTO A MIRROR THAT REFLECTED NOTHING IDENTICAL EXCEPT HIS OWN SOUL. They shared similarities visually, sure, from hair color to eye color to beard. But what struck him most was the uncanny look in his eye that Niklaus had only seen in himself after a particularly violent night, after he'd terrorized some hopeless punk just for its own sake. He wasn't entirely sure how long he'd been standing there, or when exactly the candles had been lit. The cave had a way of swallowing time. The drawings on the walls watched him the way they always had — his family's history rendered in stone, patient and indifferent. ❛❛ Is that why everyone dislikes me so much then? Hearing the way I sound coming out of your mouth is rather eye-opening. God, I'm insufferable. ❜❜ / @nikulaus

"nobody knows what you're trying to do here," she murmurs with brows furrowed, a cold chill creeps up her spine like a spider crawling its way up a pipe. the candlelight in the study flickers with each twitch of her fingers, "stefan and damon are still trying to figure it out," she mildly trusts stefan, but not his brother. never his brother, "i don't care. i don't give a damn what you're doing here, what you want with elena. i just hope you know that if you try to hurt her, or her family, even if it kills me too, you won't leave this town alive." @nikulaus

Elsa laughed and followed her sister out. “There’s only one way to be sure, isn’t there?”