Nothing Dark Can Stay, Either

Chapter 5

After the fourth year, they stopped counting.

Time passed on and it ached. Burned them in their core. Beatrix had finished her story, finished revealing her pain, and just like that, it made them numb. They started being reckless again. They started sleeping in rooms further away to not hear how the other moaned and screamed and sobbed in the middle of the night. They spoke to keep each other sane. They traveled and ate and trashed places. As more and more years passed, they seemed to have lost any hope that they would ever get out.

Beatrix wished things were simpler. She wished that she wasn't being punished for merely being turned against her will. She tried desperately to think of what could be worse. Truly, there was nothing. It was worse here than when Klaus daggered Rebekah in 1835 for her relationship with Marcel and furiously accused Beatrix of lying about her affections for him. It was worse here than the decades she spent without Kol and Rebekah, with only the company of a very hostile Klaus, a new vampire Marcellus, and a silent Elijah who seemed intent on only giving her the silent treatment without resolution.

She supposed 1887 was when things had turned around, but she had a very difficult time focusing on the good that had come after such an uncomfortable period being unable to leave out of a lack of planning that could put her in danger of being discovered, and a need for Mikaelson kinship that could only come if she stayed. She tried to remember the day that Rebakah ran up and hugged her when Klaus removed the dagger from her. The day that Rebekah forced Elijah and Beatrix into a room and they had their first conversation in a long time, about the piano. Elijah had taught her a song. She had taught him a poem she had made, that she wanted to make improvements to and have someone else publish one day.

From there came the feeling of bliss that she yearned for even more than escape. If she could just have that satisfaction once more, she would be at peace. To feel the joy when Elijah took her to Italy for their first date. The pride and hope when he was vulnerable and spoke to her every dark truth that he needed to release, which led her to reveal her true name to him. The love when they shared their first kiss because they embraced the darkest parts of each other, and meshed into one being that could see the beauty in things others could not.

"You're drooling again."

Beatrix looked up dejectedly at Kai, who was eating upside down for the fourth time in the past month. Neither of them had physically aged, but they looked jaded. Kai had let his beard and mustache grow out. His clothes were darker now, but still as random as always. He refused to cut his hair or let her cut his hair. If her estimations were correct, they were quite near the ten year mark of their stay. In real time, he would have been in his thirties. He certainly looked it.

Kai looked down at her. She was on the floor, laying on her side, having been sliding a small bouncy ball back and forth against the wall. The proximity between them would have been unfathomable years ago. Now, they mutually accepted each other's presence, respected the boundaries. No murder attempts had happened in quite a long time. Although they were distant, they were closer than before. They only had each other, and had to make the best of it.

Beatrix wiped the drool off her mouth and pushed the ball back into the wall, making a small dent. "You haven't tried eating soup upside down yet," she mused in response. "I can make that later, and you can try it."

Kai seemed to like this. "Yes, I actually would like that. I think I can manage it. If you let me siphon off of you."

"Sure."

Then came the magic. As time had gone on, she had kept her promise to teach him. They weren't the most exciting lessons, but he was focused, and they moved quickly. She allowed him to siphon from her to practice his spells. Of course, in mediation it was really just enabling him to get a feel for spellwork to a greater extent. Once he had magic of his own, it would be a different story trying to control it. She let him siphon a bit more after every lesson, but it would be impossible to tell if this would benefit him in the real world.