Body & Soul - Klaus Mikaelson

Thirty-Eight

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Klaus Mikaelson lived the majority of his thousand years missing two pieces of himself. 

The first was one I always understood. The wolf. We're born with it and it rests inside us unknowingly until we commit the darkest sin and bring it to the surface. It becomes a piece of who we are. It's an explanation for our anger, to the dark desires, and to the lack of control we all try to hide. That was taken from him too quickly after he gained it. And then he spent a thousand years running after it.

My wolf has always been some sort of comfort. It's been an explanation. It's something to blame the anger on, and something to hunger for when I need that release. Even when I was little, I understood that regardless of whether or not I initiated my curse, the wolf would always be inside of me. It was a part of my supernatural identity that I always hated. But I can't imagine walking a day on this earth without having it. I felt fulfilled in a way when all the pain stopped that first time. I felt like I was becoming myself. Yet the funniest thing is that I lost myself a second later.

The second thing he was missing, was me. I was a missing piece for five hundred years. I wasn't even in existence yet and Klaus was pining the earth in search of me. I've never had to feel that type of emptiness. Maybe because I never really wanted that bond, or when I received the Mark I had gone past love, I had convinced myself that there was no more love for me in the world. Maybe that's why I never felt the drive to find the missing piece of myself.

But now that piece is missing. 

It's a feeling worse than death itself. When we first saw each other, all those months ago in the bar while Damon was drinking away his woes on the precipice of losing Elena to vampirism, our eyes met and I finally felt like I was home, and though I didn't get to revel in the moment, it's a feeling I haven't forgotten. 

This feeling, the feeling of him not walking somewhere else in the world is the opposite. There is no warmth to ward off the shivers that overcome me every few seconds. There is no burn under my skin that is driving me towards him. No whisper tells me I need him in my life, one that is begging me to give in and complete the connection. There is no desire to be near him because he no longer exists in this world and I hate every second of this feeling.

The car jostles me from side to side. I can barely feel it. My mind isn't running through memories, it isn't clinging to anything Damon has tried to say. It's quiet, so dull I think I might go crazy. There are no thoughts, no memories. Even the strongest ones aren't fighting me today. There is nothing to take me from reality. For once in my life, my mind is dead. 

The darkness whips outside, never stopping as we go flying at speeds that aren't fit for these roads. But I don't complain, I don't say a word, there is nothing to say. I let the silence and darkness consume me. It's easier that way. I have no fight in me to keep it away. Being consumed is the easy answer and the only way of being. 

I can feel Damon's eyes peeling back my skin as he switches from staring at the road and staring at me. It's easy to tell that he doesn't want me here, he thinks I'll pull something that will endanger him. Maybe he thinks I'll wake Klaus. But I'm far too tired, and I'm too into grief to do anything except think about finding Hayley and planning my escape from this damn town that has condemned me to permanent despair. 

Stefan had found me on the front steps of the Mikaelson mansion not long after Elijah went to find his siblings to form a plan. The house was suffocating. It was too still, too empty. There were no creaking floorboards. No vampires running around at the speed of light, no bickering siblings, and certainly no people decorated in gowns and tuxes. Just me and my echoing footsteps.