#nlhm

Thank you dear!!! None Loved Her More is getting a lot of love tonight, y’all are doing a good job of making me feel like people care for it to continue!

I generally hate love triangles where all parties are innocent or all parties are unforgivable. I hated how 2x05 was our only chance at seeing the trio, and that it leaned so heavily towards a conventional and Klaus-erasing narrative. I started NLHM to twist that canon to my will, because I had always thought it was interesting, the way Tatia’s story is only told in the context that they loved her. Didn’t she love them back?

The ways in which the same woman would fall in love with these two different brothers, and the ways she would justify wanting and having both of them regardless of what games and manipulations she would have to employ, is still the intent of this looooooooong-dormant WIP! I envision not only the estrangement Elijah and Klaus describe in TVD, but also a period of tense limbo where they try to share her, and fail. And yes, I do have the intent to continue... but it’ll still be a long while yet, sorry... 

Writing human Klaus is HARD. He has changed THE MOST out of all of his siblings, and even though we have a ton of flashbacks there’s still so much that is left up in the air. Choosing to have Klaus actively flirt with and pursue Tatia was a version of Klaus that I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to, but in comparing it to Elijah’s steadfast I will be here for you in whatever way you want me, no matter my maddening affection, I wanted Tatia to face something equally charming but completely different in Klaus. 

So I played up his playfulness, and I orchestrated a situation where Tatia could plainly see that Klaus was suffering from something dark. She doesn’t feel sympathy so much as curiosity and camaraderie. She wants to know him more, this cute and beat-all-to-hell Mikaelson who is bold enough to flirt with her, dumb enough to get into a fight for her... and, like his brother, obviously willing to throw himself into her command. 

Hey ‘nonnie! 

Every single line of this fic is an attempt to get at what a human Mikaelson family would have been like, and how Tatia fell in love with the two middle brothers. Elijah’s tenderness is hidden deep as an ancient Armani-clad bloodsucker, but as a human in a rough settlement life I wanted him to smile and share himself more freely. This little scene plays up my personal favorite dynamics, which obviously include Tatia’s love triangle, but also the impact that her son and Henrik had to have had in Klaus and Elijah’s lives. 

(And if anyone wants to argue that Tatia’s son wouldn’t have been that important to them -- I will remind you that her bloodline crossed back over the Atlantic and made its way back to Eastern Europe. There is literally no time in the family tree where such a journey would have been more likely than alongside the Mikaelson vampires themselves. Sure, he wouldn’t have been left to starve without Klaus and Elijah, not with the golden ticket in his DNA, but these brothers would have definitely felt a responsibility and probably fatherhood for the child, just because of the way they love and the way they do loyalty.)

Also! culturally, homes were pretty much one-room structures for the Mikaelsons’ people. If your little brother was crying, you’d have hardly a prayer of sleeping through it. Obviously we know that Henrik and Klaus had a special bond, and having Elijah look back on such a small memory with so much love highlighted Klaus and Elijah’s relationship as well. Also. Just. I didn’t do this intentionally, but Klaus’ familiarity with pain, even at that age, had to have been profound. Even as a human child, I wrote him as a person keenly intuitive to the pain of others, and skilled in soothing it when he chooses (or leveraging it, as he does in his future career as the monster that all monsters fear). 

From Tatia’s perspective, this guy is too damn good to be true. He’s charming, comparatively well-off, and offering so many things that she needs! But she hasn’t seen the hook yet. This story is the first conversation they’ve had that was not centered around Tatia herself, and she gets to see that yeah, he really IS just LIKE this -- even more so, his cute little nostalgia moment provides her with a strategy she hasn’t applied, and she is desperate for a little rest. The Tatia in my fic did not have any extended or intensive experience with babies before she found herself giving birth to one, while Elijah has basically been a babysitter his whole life. 

I got over my roadblock with Klaus! I’ve just decided to trust my instincts and see where it takes me. I just need to add a scene and I’ll be done. Hopefully I’ll finish tonight and post it so that tomorrow I’ll make the official link post.

A canon-compliant Originals story about the woman who was the love of both their lives. Klatia + Talijah.

Elijah could not help but hear the shouting as he approached his home. His blood froze as his pace quickened; his bruised and scraped muscles tensed with fear. Mikael was likely drunk, and it did not take drunkenness to inspire fear in him. “Niklaus, what have you done,” Elijah mouthed the words to himself, as well as a prayer - he knew his brother had done nothing.