In a way, what had made him so enthralled with Tatia was not the fact that she was beautiful - that she had eyes softer than the first calls of the morning birds; that whenever she walked through the village it looked like the sun was shackled to her — but the fact that life seemed to flow from her.

This is he, Niklaus - not a man but not a boy either. And that is her, Tatia, her knees drenched in green and cupped in her hands a perfect, tiny tree, no bigger than her fist. Everything she touched bloomed with colour, curled around her wrist, hungry for the bright burst of sunlight, for the dew sprinkled on her skin like a self-made spring, caving into her like she has entire seasons stored away inside her, to be shown to him in secret.

And she liked that, she liked her secrets. What she liked most was the way his eyes closed to them when she whispers to him, like her words rotted in his ear; wrapped its black tendrils around his heart and clenched.

This is he, Niklaus, shackled to the sun. And that is her, Tatia, whispering, I never loved you.

—

Katerina was always barefoot. Katerina looked like nettles grew out of her, Katerina, when she ran, looked like her feet never touched the ground. Katerina looked like the type of girl who would delight in summer and swoon in the winter, Katerina looked at Elijah like she believes there is love in him still.

Katerina does not know that Elijah looks at her and sees the gaping maw of a dead girl’s smile, the face stolen from a ghost, the ruin of a bloodless corpse. 

"Your lips, my lord Niklaus," she falters, but she is always faltering, isn’t she? Timid, quiet, cursed, and she knew it. "They are redder than wine, like they would bleed into my skin."

Katerina does not know that a girl had opened her neck to him once, like the flow of freshwater down a broken mountain, like the sticky trickle of morning sap, and he had bathed in it like he would the murk of a plentiful stream. 

He licks his lips. She stares. These girls — (these ghosts) — they always leave their mark on him, one way or another.

—

Elena looks at him like she might die, like it’s an inkling of a thought, like she would entertain it if it only meant he would leave her friends alone. She would allow him to ravish her, to cut her open and watch her bleed, to slice into her neck and dip his tongue into her, to taste how raw and how rotten she is on the inside. To give herself to him, only if it meant—

"Only if you leave her alone," Elena whispers raggedly, writhing on the floor with blood smeared around her, but still finding it in her to look at him, to spit. "You leave Caroline alone."

He crouches down next to her, dips her finger into the dark blood pooling around his feet, raises it to her lips so she might have a taste of herself. She presses her lips together, twists her neck away. “I’m surprised, Elena, that you think so highly of me. That between all this blood business, my hybrid army, Salvatore-proofing my land and putting my family in their place that I would find the time to court your friend.”

"You had Tyler bite her for a reason," she says through clenched teeth, and he knows her vision should be blurring now, that she would be seeing two, three, six, nine of him - and he wonders, for the briefest of moments, how that would be. If he could reach inside himself and tear out his own heart, cut it up into little pieces and scatter it to the sea, watch himself be born again: once, twice, three times over.

He wonders how long it would take until he started killing himself off. He thinks of Caroline, thinks of her perfect neck and broken back, thinks of hands other than his healing her, and decides, Not that long, then.

"I know you," she hisses. "You’d kill your own brother if you could. You’ll get your hands dirty from her blood and then you’d kiss the center of your palm after." Her eyes dance. She slumps down. Her hands mark his newly-polished hardwood floors in red. 

"Maybe," he says agreeably. "I wonder, if I kissed your palm, would a tree sprout from it? I had green thumbs growing up, everything I touched burst to life." He tilts his head, smiles at her like he’s divulging her some secret. "Blood makes the most exquisite fertilizer, I find."

Elena curls up on his floor, all the fight bled out of her, her lips barely moving around her words. “Take me, take all of me, just leave Caroline alone.”

"Generous offer, but it’s a no from me." He stands up and stretches, and he watches the way her eyes close from the heaviness of her lashes. "There’s a ball coming up, you see, and I spent a rather small fortune on a dress. Would hate to have to pass up the opportunity to see how Caroline looks in it."

"I’m going to kill you one day," Elena says. He frowns. He supposes now would be the time to heal her, but he’d like to hear what she’d say if death was perched on her shoulder, watching with beatific eyes. "We’ll throw a ball. We’ll light you on fire, watch you go up in flames, and we’ll dance around you."

He smiles down at her, simpering. “Will Caroline be there?”

It’s a struggle, he can see, but Elena opens her eyes. “Oh, she will. She’ll be the one to light the match.”

"How can you be so sure?"

"I know her. I know you. Your kind disgusts her."

At this, he laughs. Softly at first, but then it grows, it shakes out of him, it rumbles through his belly and causes ripples in her pooling blood. “Oh, we’ll see about that.”