Chapter Text
Beacon Hills.
To the outside it’s just your run-of-the-mill small-town – quiet and uneventful, but if you actually talked to anyone who lived there you’d find a very different story.
The humans of Beacon Hills know that something is off with the town, but other than the animal attacks and above average body count they don’t have any concrete complaints to explain the odd feeling that seems to emanate from the place.
The local supernatural however, have more than enough examples of just how horrible their little Hell Mouth is.
For Scott, it’s where his life fell apart. He got bit by a half-mad Alpha there and everything after that has just been one long game of Don’t Die.
For Isaac it’s where his family died. Where his father beat and abused him because of how much the boy reminded him of what he had lost. Where his father then died. Where he found a home with the Pack. It’s the place that he ran from the first chance he got and the place he came back to when he realized that he couldn’t live without the family he had found.
For Lydia, it’s a prison. Somewhere that she’s trapped, a brilliant mind trapped amongst small-town minds until she manages to escape for college at the first possible opportunity. It’s the place where she got pulled into a life that she never wanted and turned into a Death Magnet™ (as Stiles likes to call it)
For Jackson it’s where he’s tried his whole life to be perfect – to do everything in his power to make sure that the parents that adopted him never had a reason not to love him. It’s where he was forced to confront that he’s more broken than he wants to admit when he was turned into a monster and forced to kill. Like Isaac, it’s a place he left behind only to return that very summer, unable to stay away from the allure of Pack, of a family that would love him unconditionally.
For Boyd and Erica it’s where they first found the promise of being better. No longer lonely or trapped in a broken body. But it’s also where they found that stronger didn’t mean untouchable – a lesson they learned well thanks to one Gerard Argent and the Alpha Pack.
To any of the remaining Hale’s it’s a vivid reminder of what they’ve lost and what more they stand to lose. It’s why Cora went back to South America. Why Derek fights so hard to teach Scott how to be a good Alpha, despite never having been trained to be one himself. Why Peter hides behind his snark and indifference instead of allowing anyone closer than arm’s length.
But for a certain Mikaelson , the violence of Beacon Hills is refreshing. It’s a walk in the park on a sunny day. A vacation from the blood-soaked life that he once lived with his real family. It’s a safe-haven.
If only he knew that was all about to change.
*****
Lukas let out a scream of frustration and pain as he finally managed to wrench the heart out of the last remaining werewolf, but not before they sink their fangs into his shoulder, ripping out a chunk of his flesh and leaving lethal werewolf venom burning its way through his system. He groans as the last body falls to the ground cursing himself as a fool in the privacy of his own head. The Rogers Pack were certainly slightly more conniving than he had given them credit for, as they had held back at least five of their members to surprise attack him in the middle of a battle he had thought was almost done.
He had been hearing rumors of them for months now as they slowly made their way across the continent, leaving a path of carnage in their wake as they headed straight towards Beacon Hills in search of the True Alpha – the one who (according to some very false rumors) had allegedly killed an entire Alpha Pack by himself. It had taken Luka about two seconds to realize that if he wanted to avoid a headache and any of his friends getting hurt, he should probably meet them before they made it into California, lest he have to deal with Scott’s whole Holier-Than-Thou-we-don’t-kill thing that always ends badly.
Hell, the only reason he even has half of the status he does in the supernatural community is because Lukas always goes in and cleans up after him when he decides to act on the completely inaccurate idea that if you just give psychopaths and murders a second chance they’ll see the light and become tax-paying citizens instead of psychopaths and murders with a grudge. He’s the one who took care of Gerard when the sort of poisoned sort of werewolf escaped – and he was none too kind to the man in the end, though he liked to think of that as payback for what he did to Erica and Boyd and him in the Argent basement. He’s also the one who tracked down Deucalion and put an end to that mess – just in time too, as he had been on the verge of getting everything he needed to return even stronger than before (and with fully functioning eyes).
Anyways, his point is that he had cut the Rogers Pack off in Nevada and tried to convince them to turn around and leave. When that didn’t work he started ripping heads off of bodies and hearts out of chests – but of course, he had to get bitten. Just his rotten luck.
So much for an easy job. He curses in his head, doing his best to staunch the flow until his body can knit itself back together. His plan now has to be accelerated considerably to make sure that he can burn the bodies and find somewhere to hide before the hallucinations set in. At least it won’t kill me. He goes for optimism but misses laughably. For a normal vampire, a bite from a werewolf is a very painful death sentence, for an Original like Lukas, it’s an excruciating few days spent hungry, hurting, and reliving any and every memory that decides to pop into his head until the venom is gone. Which usually takes a few days – during which he will probably kill everyone he comes across if he can’t manage to find somewhere to lock himself down.
“Evil bloody werewolves can’t keep their fucking teeth to themselves.” He mutters expletives as he works, slowed considerably by pain. But he manages to get everything aflame before the dizziness and disorientation set in. “Come on, Lukas. Don’t lose it now.”
He catches himself on fire twice in his daze before he finds an empty warehouse building where he stashes his daylight ring in a well-protected spot outside and collapses just as the hallucinations set it. It’s going to be a long few days.
***
The Mikaelson family has been through hell in their very long time on his earth. It has almost constantly been a battle to survive, which they all find incredibly ironic considering they are, for all intents and purposes, immortal and damn near indestructible. Things weren’t exactly peachy as humans, but then add in the death of their baby brother and their insane parents killing them and turning them into blood-sucking blights of nature, not to mention the ongoing struggle to outrun and outlive their now executioners that some of them still call parents…well, it’s made a thousand years feel more like an eon. Still, without a doubt, the most painful thing they have ever had to endure, was their brother Lukas leaving.
Realizing that Lukas had fled was the worst moment of Nik’s life - until he woke all of their siblings from their daggered slumber in a panic and had to explain to them what he’d done, that was much worse somehow. He had truly never meant to hurt his family, but his fear of Mikael and Esther, of not being enough, had shattered his family and led the one person that knew him better than anyone else to flee out of fear. That knowledge alone – that he was responsible – would have killed him has his heart still truly beat.
It had taken a long time – almost the whole century since the departure of their brother – to make amends with his remaining family, but he had done it. All the while searching tirelessly for Lukas, but finding nothing – or worse, finding where he was just a little too late to catch up with him. Those were the times that Klaus often isolated himself from his family to keep his rage and sorrow far away from them.
Today though, today is different. They know where he is, and now all they have to do is get there fast enough. He’s chosen to drive in a separate car from his family, even after a hundred years, he doesn’t always trust himself not to take his nerves out on his siblings. Sitting in solitude as he drives well over what traffic laws deem as acceptable, the only person Klaus can hurt or upset is himself, and he’s doing a damn good job.
His head is filled with a million awful scenarios of Lukas hating him. He caused his brother to run from him, he probably does hate him. Will it end in a fight? Klaus won’t try and stop him. He deserves it after what he’s done. Will the rest of his siblings leave him for Lu-
His phone rings, thankfully cutting off that particular nightmare. It’s Elijah. “What is it?”
“I’ve just been informed that there’s been a fire in a warehouse in Nevada. Fifteen bodies, all with their heads, throats, or hearts ripped out. It was the Rogers Pack. The witch that called knows him personally and says that he’s been bitten.”
“How far is it?” Klaus suddenly can’t breathe. He can feel his chest moving but, his lung working, but each breath brings no relief.
“Half an hour if we hurry.”
Thirty minutes.
His brother is hurt and hallucinating, alone, only thirty minutes away from him. How is it that half an hour feels longer than the millennium they’ve walked this earth?
He hangs up without a word and presses harder on the accelerator, weaving in and out of the sparse traffic at speeds that earn him a whole lot of angry honking.
Thirty minutes.
***
He screams in frustration as he tries to leave through the door only to have the sunlight streaming in send him reeling backward in agony. He’s hungry, so fucking hungry. The kind of hungry that he hasn’t felt in centuries, since he was new. The kind that burns through your entire body and taints everything red, that seems to push all rational thought out of your head until all you're left with is this hunger and the instincts of the world’s best apex predator.
Honestly, that would be fine, really. He faintly thinks that this isn’t the first time he’s been hungry like this, somewhere in the little space he still has left to think. Except that in that ever-shrinking space he knows that he’s hallucinating. He can feel the werewolf venom burning through him, feel the fresh wound on his neck, smell the rot and sickness that has already set in.
He's struggling to remain in control of himself as it is when he hears it. A heartbeat. Wet and warm and oh so good in his current state. It’s coming closer to him, somewhere outside the building. His fangs drop of their own accord as he waits – outside of where the sunlight streams in – for his prey. The smell is divine, something sweet and satiating that he doesn’t have enough thought left to identify.
“How dare you!” He whirls around in shock to see Michael advancing on him, rage exuding out of every line in his body. “I am your father, and you will not speak to me like that! Come here!”
He refuses to move, whether it’s out of fear or determination he isn’t sure, but he holds his ground even as the man advances, towering over him.
“I said come here, Niklaus! Stop hiding behind your younger brother like a coward!”
Suddenly he can feel Nik behind him as he goes towards that monster, shaking with dread and a kind of resignation that kills Luka. He reaches out and grabs hold of him before Mikael can reach him with outstretched hands that promise violence and jerks him back behind him, where he knows Finn and Rebekah are. They’ll hold onto him, Luka knows, all he has to do is protect him.
“What do-“
“Walk away.” He says firmly, forcing himself not to flinch from the fire in his eyes. “Walk away before this gets ugly.”
“How d-“
“Luka?” He whirls again, that sweet scent filling his nose once more, this time closer, warmer. In the moments between him seeing her and him sinking his fangs into her throat where he can vaguely hear her talking, he thinks he recognizes her. Right before the bloodlust fully takes over, in that inch of space he still has left in his head, he thinks that maybe, if it had just been the hunger, she would have been okay. Maybe if he wasn’t reliving one of the worst brawls he ever had as a human with Mikael, she would have lived.
Too late now, with her blood on his tongue, just as beautiful as he thought it would be. His head is so full, the euphoria of drinking this woman dry and overwhelming onslaught of emotions from the memory fight for dominance in his brain.
“You’ll not lay a hand on him.” He says firmly, the youth in his voice startling him. His magic comes forth as does Mikael, meeting him as he ducks the enraged swing and throws one of his own that hits home with supernatural power that the man never stood a chance agai-
-blood so sweet and wet, but not enough. His body still burns and as the life begins to fade out of her he nearly weeps. Not enough.
His head is clouded. His body hurts as the man he calls father attacks him, each blow making him want to scream, but he can’t pry his jaws from the source of this ecstasy. Surely this feeling will never stop, certainly if it didn’t it still wouldn’t be enough. It feels as though a colony of hornets made of fire has taken up residence in his throat, and this is the soothing tonic that’s supposed to drown them but it doesn’t.
Not even as his father pulls a knife to even the fight, or as his sister's screams and sobs cut their way through the rest and burn themselves into his brain, not even as he and Mikael fight to the death as Finn and Elijah struggle to separate them.
It still burns-
“Lukas, no!” Rebekah shouts, the sound of her voice much older but still panicked cuts suddenly through the overpowering melody of bloodsweetthirstyblood singing from the veins of the body in his arms, severing him from the memory and the pain that comes with it. He releases his victim numbly, looking for the source of the voice and damn near crying when he finds it.
“Rebekah.” He breathes a smile beginning to form before the realization sets in.
Oh.
Another hallucination.
Or is it a nightmare? He can’t tell if he’s really been bitten or not. Either way, he’s done this enough times to know how it goes. He turns in a slow circle, finding each one of his siblings scattered in a loose circle. First Kol, who has tears in his eyes. Then Elijah, who looks very concerned and worried. The look on Finn’s face almost makes him cry, though he doesn’t know how to describe it. And lastly, Klaus, who looks like he’s either going to cry or charge him and rip his heart out. Lukas can’t decide which is more likely and that realization drives him to his knees.
His sorrow temporarily overpowers his hunger, pushing it back and giving him more room to think. More room to hurt. He realizes that this isn’t a memory, so then it must be a nightmare. At least then he knows it will end – how it will end.
Tears well up in his eyes, spilling over his cheeks before he can stop them. “Just do it.” He pleads with him, grateful for once for the tears obscuring his vision so that he doesn’t have to look too closely at him. He doesn’t want to see the betrayal he knows is there. “Please, Nik.” He begs, feeling small and exhausted and still so hungry and confused. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. I just want to go home! I just want to see my family again! I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the nightmares, and the dreams that seem so perfect but always end up here. When does it stop? How many more times must we does this? When is it enough? We have gone through every possible variation – sadness, grief, betrayal, anger, it all ends the same way, and I’m so tired of waking up alone after you kill me. So please, do whatever it is you have to do so that I can go back to that, I suppose being alone is better than this. Better than watching you all kill me for what I did over and over. Just do it.”
“It’s okay, Lukas.” Finn’s voice says calmly in his ear as something small and sharp pricks his neck. A wave of exhaustion sweeps over him instantaneously, but his brother catches him as he crumples. “This will bring no dreams. Rest.”
That is the last thing he hears before blackness takes over his vision, leaving him confused, but blissfully without dreams.