Body & Soul - Klaus Mikaelson

Twenty

I flip through my father's journal again. Pretending to read as I sew new pieces of the memory Stefan gave me into its pages. It will rest there with the one of Elena being alive. At least it is out of my head, as I gently cling to the idea. Something harder for Klaus to find.

My body doesn't like the idea of hiding something from Klaus. I can feel it as it's harder to place the memory out of my mind. The bond continues to grow, the more we're together the stronger it gets. It is scaring me. It's like an internal battle that neither side of me can win. My head and my heart are battling, waiting for one to give. My body already possesses the bond, feeding it and helping it to strength. It has been since the moment we met eyes. But my head and I have been driving it away, trying to keep our own freedoms away from Klaus.

And there is no knowing what Klaus is feeling with this bond. Whether he has given in to it or is trying to ignore it like I am. 

Klaus and Stefan indulge in wine on the red sofas next to my chair. Klaus doesn't bother me. He has kept his distance since last night, barely sparing me a word. He may cling to the idea that I will always be by his side because I feel the need to be, but he is irate. I know he hates the fact that I stood up to him, that I did something no one else would dare to do. And like him, I hate the fact that he won't do a thing about it. We both know the emotional trauma would be worse than the end result.

Stefan is too deep in his new memories to be bothered by the rest of the world. He gave some of them to me last night. Moments with Klaus and Rebekah. The moments that Stefan is the least ashamed of. But he alone is in his confusion. Losing a part of your past is something hard to battle. Keeping my own memory from myself, which I hid well with booze, still rattles what I thought I was running from.

When I thought I was running from grief, I subconsciously knew I was running from Klaus. I was running from two things and only thinking about one. Because in some sense I didn't know about the memory I had hidden from myself. Something I regret now. Maybe I could have been hidden from Klaus my whole life. I wouldn't have had Bonnie lift the spell, and I wouldn't have gone back to the town ridden with the supernatural. I would have found my own way into a normal life. The one I always wanted. I would have been safe. 

Rebekah is in a changing stall, attempting to find clothes that will suit her for the modern age that she has woken up in. It was quite the squabble for her to know she lost quite a lot of time. But she is better company than Stefan and Klaus. She is opinionated but she is something new. She doesn't mope like Stefan and she doesn't watch me like hawk as Klaus does. She treats me like a friend. Something I haven't had this whole trip.

No hate to Stefan, but he isn't the vampire that saved me two years ago as I ran through the woods trying to dodge the life that had been given to Elena. He is not the vampire that jumped into the water to save a girl he never knew. As much as he tries to convince Klaus and me otherwise, his emotions are still on and he is still fighting. But that doesn't change that he has changed. The blood has tainted him and he is drowning. And he won't let me help. I miss my friend, the one who talked me back into my life. The one that gave me a home. 

I miss the real Stefan. And he seems all but lost.

"There has to be more to this dress," Rebekah complains loudly. 

"There's not," Klaus tells her. Wine sloshes in the glass within his hand. He has been at that bottle since we got here. His sister has been driving him crazy with the shopping.

Rebekah stalks from the dressing room in a black dress, "So women in the twenty-first-century dress like prostitutes, then."

I shrug flipping another page, giving it another piece of the memory, "Depends. If you think that is prostitute wait till you see what they really wear."