Shielding The Innocent - Niklaus Mikaelson

Chapter 9

   Walking into the dining room I find Rebekah at one end of the table and Niklaus at the other. Rebekah sits with a bored look on her face and Niklaus stands next to what I'm sure is a compelled girl. He bites her wrist and allows her blood flow into his glass.

   "That's lovely." I comment sarcastically and scrunch up my face before sitting next to Rebekah.

   "Have you spoken to our good friend Marcel today?" He asks Rebekah.

   "Can't say that I have." She answers taking a sip of coffee. I grab a glass of water that is already on the table, along with some fruit.

   "Well, he's been mysteriously silent, avoiding me, some might say." He puts his attention back on filling his glass. "I thought, prehaps, he may have whispered reasons into your ear along with all those sweet nothings." He teases her.  I roll my eyes and take a drink of water and he releases the random girl.

   "If I see him, I'll be sure to ask if he's still sore at you." She says staring at him as he sits across from her and next to me.

   "Let me give a voice to that look in your eyes." He replies arrogantly. "'My saintly, noble brother lies writhing in agony in the Bayou, victim of my bastard brother's bite when just one or two drops of his blood would ease his pain.'" He attempts to mock her.

   "You forgot Hayley, who could be killed while he's in one of his hallucinations." I sneer under my breath knowing they both can hear me.

   "On the contrary, Nik. I am simply enjoying my brekkie waiting for Elijah's healthy return." She says nonchalantly with a slight shrug. Confused by her reaction to her brother's unnecessary violent out burst, I become skeptical of her. In the short time I've known her she hasn't allowed any trangression made by Niklaus go, without loudly and assertively voicing her opinion.

   "Oh, come on, Rebekah." Niklaus tells her. "You've been giving me the devil's eye all morning. Out with it."

   "Perhaps I'm concerned that if I voice my opinion about what you did to Elijah, I will end up on the wrong side of your toxic hybrid teeth." She retorts. What she says has honesty, but I can't help but get the feeling there is something she is hiding.

   "Poppycock." Niklaus exlaims smacking the table and pointing at her. "I would never bite you." Rebekah just rolls her eyes. "Elijah made some very offensive accusations about my intentions towards my child. He deserves a day or two of discomfort." He defends his actions. "Besides, you know my preferred method of punishment for your indiscretions is the dagger." I scoff as Rebekah lightly chuckles and stands from her chair and leans across the table.

   "There's something fundamentally wrong with you." She stares him in the eyes before walking out. His face falls.

   "She's not entirely wrong." I shrug at him.

   "Thank you for that." He scoffs. 

   "You keep their coffins on standby. You threaten to stab them in the heart with a dagger that puts them in complete darkness." I deadpan. "Not to mention, you tend to leave them there for decades. And then when you finally decide they've served their sentence, you wake them. Only for everyone they cared for outside your family to be dead and everything in the world to have changed."

   "Your point?" He asks.

   "They're your family, not your property. They have their own opinions and their own way of doing things. You can't control them, it's wrong." I spell out for him. "And even through all the crap you keep putting them through with the daggering, they are still here. But, someone can only take so much before you finally succeed in pushing them away."