Chapter Text
Coming down from a werewolf bite sucks. Coming down from a werewolf bite after being dosed with vervain sucks considerably more. His head is fuzzy and everything hurts. He can feel the moment he goes from laying there, able to hear but not conscious yet, to when he really wakes up, cause that’s when all hell breaks loose. Everything is jumbled, all disjointed and out of order to the point that he can’t tell what’s actually happening.
There’s pain so intense that it feels like there are fires alight in his body, burning through him, white-hot and all-consuming. In his throat, in his shoulder close enough to not really be distinguishable from the hunger, in his veins and all the way down to his bones. And it’s loud. So loud. His memories scream at him, and he thinks he might be screaming back and there’s chaos screaming around him too. Even his thoughts are loud.
It’s hell. One big dissonant mess of noise and pain and sensation overlapping in his brain melding into too much. He isn’t sure what’s real, only that he’s hurting and hungry, and that he can smell something divine that he knows will fix both problems.
Easier said than done when you’re hallucinating every moment of your life – the good, bad, and awful (of which he’s noticing there is a lot of that one in particular) – and every step feels like you’re being stabbed with fire.
His feet carry him of their own accord as arms reach for him, narrowly missing. Mikael screams at him.
He can hear his brother’s voice calling him, but he shakes it off, not wanting to take part in any memory where Finn calls his name like that, knowing they end in him standing atop a pile of bodies. His hunger is burning like it hasn’t in years, and somewhere nearby is the sweetest blood. He just has to find it.
Ester turns a blind eye to the bruises on Klaus’s face at breakfast, so Lukas slips a hallucinogenic into her tea, knowing the hell that comes from being at the mercy of spirits all too eager to take advantage of a witch unable to close her mind.
A red-haired girl that smells of fear and something heavenly screams and it feels like his head will explode. His magic quiets her.
He laughs until he cries at Rebekah’s impersonation of Mary Queen of Scots while Klaus and Elijah drink some blonde twink dry in Paris.
Hands rip at him just before his teeth break through her skin. He screams in rage, seizing his attacker and throwing him through a window.
A clan of witches try and rip the magic out of him, it’s excruciating. He kills them all.
Something hard smacks into him and he goes flying through the air, grappling with a dark-haired man that shouts at him. The landing knocks the air from his lungs as pain lances through him, holding back the memories for a moment.
He struggles to his feet, looking around in confusion. He sees his brother laying on the ground next to him, neck broken, the loft windows shattered, he hears people rushing to get to him.
His head is foggy, but he knows now, what’s happening. He knows that he needs to get somewhere away from people to ride out the rest of the hallucinations.
“Lukas!” A familiar voice calls and he stops just before he starts to run. Bekah. They make eye contact for one long moment before she nods and he disappears, running as fast as he can to safety.
All his life the woods have been his favorite place. There is a certain kind of tranquility that comes from being surrounded by nothing but trees and nature. Time seems to stop, the rest of the world melts away and all that’s left is you and the sunlight filtering through the leaves, and the sounds of the deer in the nearby stream. He used to spend hours in the woods as a child, picking flowers with Bekah, or playing hide and seek with Kol, hunting for food with Elijah and Finn, hiding from Mikael with Klaus. A great part of his very long life has been spent surrounding himself in green and letting the trees block out his troubles. That tends to work a little better when your problems are people rather than werewolf venom.
Today the woods bring no relief. The venom stills burns, in fact, it seems to burn hotter and more intense now like it knows it has almost run its course and as such, has turned the dial up to eleven in a futile attempt to escape the inevitable. The hallucinations still haunt him. Changing his path over and over as he runs from the things he sees until his body is too exhausted to run any farther.
He collapses somewhere, a meadow, he thinks. The grass is soft and the sun is warm, contrasting the hell in his head. He nearly cries in frustration, knowing there’s nothing to do now except let it pass.
“It’s okay, Lukas,” Klaus tells him in his head, brushing his sweat-slicked hair out of his eyes. “It’s almost gone.”
They’re in their old home, only a month or two before they were turned and he’s sick. Fighting off some awful illness that makes him feel like he’s going to cough up a lung. His whole body hurts just laying still.
“It’s not okay.” He tells the vision of his brother, tears welling up in his eyes. “I left him. I left Niky. He must hate me.”
“I could never hate you.” His brother assures him softly.
“Not yet.” He admits as tears well up in his eyes, clouding his vision. “But you will. Gods, Nik, I wish I could go back. I would do it all so differently. I would have protected us better. I would have protected you better – killed him the moment he even tried to hurt you. I should have killed him.”
“Shh.” Klaus soothes, his hand still combing through his hair. “It’s okay, Mischief. You did your best. We all did. It was never on you to protect us, especially not from him.”
“I let him poison us.” He shakes his head vigorously, groaning when he nearly vomits from the pain. “I let him break us. He tried to turn us into monsters, into him. And it worked. I am most certainly a monster now. But they’re not. They’re still good. Nik is still good, even if he refuses to believe it. I’ll make him believe it, I swear, even if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll go back and fix things. He might dagger me, but if that’s what it takes I’ll do it. I’d spend the rest of my life daggered if he’d just believe me.”
“Lukas.” His brother weeps. “You’re killing me.”
“I’m sorry. Just…can we just stay here until it ends? I like this memory. It was so peaceful. You sang to me until I fell asleep.”
“Yes, Mischief. We can stay here.”
“Good. That’s good. Let’s stay here.”
“Okay.”
*****
He wakes to the sound of someone singing. Soft and sweet and familiar. He thinks he’s still hallucinating for a long moment before he realizes that he feels better. The pain is gone, except for the hunger, and his head is clear. That thought keeps him very still for a while.
Please let this be real.
When he opens his eyes, he almost cries. He’s lying on the ground, with his head in his brother’s lap. Klaus is watching something in the distance as he quietly sings songs he hasn’t heard in centuries. He’s afraid to move, afraid to disturb the moment, so he lays there, forcing his heart to beat steady and his breathing to remain calm, letting himself have this moment of good before he must face the music.
He sings three songs before he finally stops. Then he’s quiet for a while and Lukas takes that time to memorize his face, even though it hasn’t changed, and he hasn’t forgotten it, he does it anyway. His brother looks tired, not physically, physically he looks fine, but his shoulders look heavy with some invisible weight, and every bone in his body is screaming at him to fix it, that this isn’t what he’s supposed to look like. He’s supposed to be the happy boy that he was when he was young, that smiled easily and trusted people with his heart.
He's so caught up in his thoughts that he almost misses when Klaus looks down at him and sees that he’s awake. It’s a long, frozen moment, where he waits desperately for him to say something. Anything to convince Lukas that this is real.
Logically, he knows that Klaus is real, he can feel him, warm from the sun and solid, against him, and he can smell his scent, mountain air and thunderstorms, and something unbearably soft and floral. He knows that Klaus is here, but a large part of him is afraid it isn’t true. That is another hallucination or a dream, he’s had enough like these that it isn’t exactly far-fetched.
He thinks it’s the look on his brother’s face that unfreezes him and lets him sit up to face him. Nik looks…afraid. He smells like a million different emotions, but thankfully anger is not one of them.
Luka is thankful that they’re not standing with how Nik’s icy blue gaze has all but swallowed him up. “Hullo, Nik.”
“Lukas…” Nik hesitates, shifting uncomfortably.
“I have lost count of the times I’ve dreamt of this moment,” Lukas says once the tension becomes too much for him. “A hundred years is a long time, Nik, and I’m fairly certain I’ve planned out every way this could possibly go, so…just go ahead.” He doesn’t say anything, just waits with a hesitant expression. “Nik, you…you do have to actually say something.”
Still nothing. His brother just stares at him, almost blankly. “Okay.” Lukas nods after a moment, “I’ll go first. I-um…Well-uh-bloody hell, this is hard. I’m so sorry Nik. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have said those horrible things, but I really shouldn’t have left and I-I broke our promise and I-I abandoned our family. Always and forever. Family above all. I made that vow, and then I broke it and I wish-I wish I could take it back, Niklaus. I wish so much that I could-umph!”
Suddenly he's wrapped in a hug so tight that it genuinely knocks the breath out of him. Before he can even process what’s happened, his arms are wrapped around his brother and he’s sobbing into his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mischief,” Klaus says into his hair and his voice sounds thick with all the emotions Lukas is choking on. “I’m so sorry. I should have never…Lukas, you didn’t break your promise. I did. I pushed everyone away. I let my anger rule me and I left you to clean up the mess I left in my wake. An older brother is supposed to be a protector, but I put the weight of the world on your shoulders until you had no choice but to leave or be crushed by it. And for that, I will never - no matter how long I walk on this earth - be able to express to you how sorry I am. I am-I am sorry for making you live in fear that you could one day wind up in a box simply for angering me. I am sorry that I was not a better brother to you. I don’t expect you to ever forgive me, and if you never do, I-I wouldn’t blame you. I know that I messed up, and though I can’t change the past, I have been trying desperately to make up for it. It’s taken a century, but I have earned the forgiveness of our family for how I treated them. I have had much to apologize for, but I owe you the biggest apology. I just-I hope you know how much I have missed you, Luka. Not a day has gone by for a hundred years where I haven’t been searching for you, where I haven’t wished with every fiber of my being that I could go back and change things. And I-“
“Shut up Nik.” He cries, holding onto him tighter. “Before you turn me into a bloody puddle.”