The Hybrid's Humanity (A Klaus Mikaelson Love Story)

Chapter 18

   I didn't take the potion.

   I thought about it long and hard all throughout the night, and debated whether or not I should take it. It wasn't that hard of a decision. If I took it, I reclaimed whatever it was that I forgot. If I didn't, I would never find out. Although there was a part of me that was insanely curious as what it was that I had 'locked in that room I dare not open', there was a part of me that thought what if there's a good reason I've forgotten it? I thought about, throwing back those two thoughts in my mind and wondered what their outcomes would be before I finally settled on not taking it. However I wouldn't destroy it. Right now I had too much on my plate as it was and didn't need more on it with this potion. Instead, I placed it into my mother's old music box and locked it away in the back of my closet where I knew it would be safe.

   I didn't have the least regret in deciding not to take it. In fact once it was safely out of view I felt a weight off my shoulders that I hadn't been able to lift before and was able to drift off. Once again I was met with a strange dream as if it had been waiting for the moment I would close my eyes. Ever since I had had the one about the two children, I had more and more frequent dreams about them. They almost seemed like pointless dreams in a way because they were about trivial things: flower picking, dancing in the overgrown meadow, or running around and playing in a forest, but they were also beautiful and sweet. Every time I woke up I felt happy and relaxed, like I had just finished lying in that same meadow gazing up at the clouds. However, my dreams had slightly shifted from me being an onlooker to the actual little girl somewhere during one of my past dreams. I was experiencing everything through her eyes now and experiencing it as if I was right there, not besides her, but as if I was her. And in my dreams I was. Just like now. As my eyes drifted close and the blanket covered my body, the warmth from my sheets suddenly became the warmth from the sun shining down beautifully from a blue sky.

   A beautiful sunset was passing down the horizon, casting a brilliant red, pink, purple, and orange wash across the darkening sky and onto the face of the young boys' who was resting on my lap. Except he wasn't a young boy anymore, he was a teenager now, maybe 15 or 16, and his baby fat had melted from his face leaving only strong cheekbones and more clearly defined features behind. Curiously he looked a lot like Klaus, but only just a little. However, marring his beautiful features was a black eye that had sealed his right eye shut and below it was a thin, elongated scratch extending from the side of his nose to his ear. I stroked the hair away from his face as he slept, caressing his cheeks and his forehead as he slept peacefully. I felt happy, but despite that there was a lingering anger that burned in the pit of my stomach whenever my fingers came close to his black eye and crossed over the lightly blood caked scratch. I can recall myself having wiped his face clean of the blood that had painted his face like a horrible mural when he met up with me for our regular escapes from the village. I could tell that he had tried to clean himself, to at least make himself presentable when he met me because the bottom front of his grayish shirt had been strained red and some parts of his face where there was no injury has the impression of being wiped although not successfully. The sight of him had been horrifying as I screamed his name and grasped him around his torso before he collapsed to the floor.

   I had led him to the river, dragged him really, and used the cloth ripped from the hem of my river blue dress to clean his face. I had reset his broken nose so now it was fine, but the black eye infuriated me. Michael did this. Niklaus hadn't wanted to tell me what had happened at first, but when I finally wore him down he retold the incident to me vaguely. I understood why he hadn't wanted to give me details because he knew how I would respond, but vague or detailed the outcome would have been the same.