Birds Of A Feather || N. Mikaelson

⊳⊳15⊲⊲

❝Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.❞

― Gloria Steinem

⊳⊳|⊲⊲

It was silent on the drive back and the hybrid didn't say a word. He didn't even know what to say. He was confused, hurt, and overall, angry. Glancing out of the corner of his eye, he studied the blonde as she rested her cheek against the glass window of the car. 

This girl was so different from the one he'd seen in action not even an hour earlier. The woman that had stood in the Salvatore Boarding House was not the Roxanne that he had gotten to know these past few weeks. The cruelty in her eyes and the way she'd enjoyed torturing the young vampire was something he didn't see in her. Even now, it felt like he'd witnessed a different person. 

Two completely different personalities occupying one body. The Ghostess and Roxanne. It didn't match in his mind that they were even the same. The Ghostess' actions bordered on pure evil, driven by revenge. He couldn't judge her for that, though. He would never deny someone the sweet, honey-like flavor of revenge. It was something he had pursued many times in his long life. 

But, it wasn't like Roxanne. He felt as if she somehow had a split personality disorder. As if the Ghostess was a clone of hers. 

He'd longed for the Ghostess for many years. Rumors of her had been circling long before he was granted immortality. It drove him mad that he could never find her, never get close enough. He'd studied her actions, her whereabouts. He learned who she killed and why she did it. She had morality, but she was still cruel. She never hurt children or mothers. She never hurt men that were good fathers. But, she killed those that were corrupt, those that abused their families and those that ruined their villages. 

He'd seen the kills she'd done. The piles of bodies stacked on the edges of villages. But, he also saw the villages after. They were happier, healthier. Their people socialized more, they had more community. What she was doing was helping them, like pruning the dead leaves off a plant. 

He'd admired her work and seen her as an artist. He'd deeply desired to meet her. In his mind it was poetic, almost. The King of the Undead and the Goddess of Death coming together in unity, what could be better? He sought to court her, but he never seemed to get to her in time. He'd hear of her whereabouts and get there just moments after she'd left. Let it be as close as an hour or as long as a day, he'd arrive just a little too late. 

He always had. Or, so he thought. It seemed, according to what Roxanne had said, he had courted the Ghostess. He'd fallen in-love with her many times over, and had achieved what he'd hoped he would. Uniting two forces of death in love. 

Roxanne had lied to him. That was what made him furious. She lied to him so many times, and stolen from him. She'd taken his memories and like a coward, she ran. She couldn't bother even letting him remember the fact he'd had a lover. That someone could love him the way she had. 

He moved through his memories, trying to find the places that didn't quite match. Where she had ripped them out and stitched them loosely together with cheap replacements. There were a few inconsistencies, but that is what memories can do. 

At last, deep in his mind, he reached a door. It was locked many times over, and it was heavy. He could feel that. He suspected the memories were behind it, but there was no way to know. Klaus tentatively reached his hand out, brushing his fingers over the wood. Something small, barely a thread, hung there.