chapter six.
Matthias walked over to Finn and Finn stiffened as Matthias held his face gently in his hands. Finn felt his chest ache when Matthias' eyes turned watery as he looked him over, and there was this undeniable feeling of guilt that was bubbling inside of him, but he couldn't stop.
Matthias could see it, the guilt swimming in his eyes and the way his eyes seemed to gloss over before it was like something in him snapped him back into his role and he was stepping away from Matthias and around him. He wouldn't say that it didn't hurt, because it did, but he also could feel Finn's internal struggle.
Sitting down beside Klaus, Matthias downs his wine in one shot making Klaus shoot him a worried glance.
Elijah poured Finn a glass of wine and he smelled it. "What an aromatic bordot."
"Well, it was a challenge to find a good pairing. What wine goes well with treachery?" Klaus said and Matthias kept quiet.
"Don't pout, brother." Finn told him while sitting down. "Tonight is meant to be a happy occasion."
The server walked over, and Finn whispered something in her ear, making Matthias and Klaus narrow their eyes in slight suspicion.
"What exactly are we celebrating?" Elijah asked him.
"Why, my return, of course." Finn said. "Remember, I spent nine hundred years... right? Lying daggered in a box. I'm rather enjoying this new body. Strolling about your lovely city that, uh, you've made your home. But do tell me- what'd I miss? Regale me with your contributions to society. Medicine? Philosophy? Art? Or have you two merely cut a path of destruction across time?"
"And what have you done since your return Finn?" Matthias snapped at him. "Aside from having a young witch be attacked by wolves in a bar when she was on a date." Matthias gave him a pointed look, "Why do you sit here and judge us when you have done nothing at all."
"The last time we met, you were helping our mother try to annihilate the lot of us." Klaus reminded him. "Matthias had to remove that nasty little spell she had over you. Let's not throw stones in glass houses."
"Are we expecting another guest?" Elijah questioned when two other spots were prepared.
"Mother will sit at the head. And, as for the seat across from me, that's reserved for another of our clan." He told them. "Care to wager an educated guess? How about a paranoid one?"
"Well, there's no way Kol would listen to anything other than his ego." Klaus told him while looking to Matthias worriedly.
"Kol would sooner rip his own tongue out before listening to you or our mother." Matthias told Finn and it unnerved him how calm Matthias was being.
"Are you so sure?" Finn asked Matthias. "Even if it meant removing that tiny little linking spell that you have with Niklaus?"
"Kol knows better than to believe Esther!" Matthias snapped and he was now enraged. "When will you all learn that the link is unbreakable, I made it so!"
Finn almost wanted to comfort Matthias, but he couldn't. "Mother has made such a compelling argument that even he, the wildest of us Mikaelson's, has seen the error of his ways and accepted his new form, with vigor. Change, dear brothers, is inevitable." Finn told them.
"You would dare face us as a mortal" Klaus said. "The only thing inevitable is your death."
Klaus flung the knife beside him in Finn's direction, but with his ability to now do magic, it was deflected into the chair at the head of the table.
"Oh." Finn removed the knife from the chair. "I suppose the honor of carving should go to the oldest. We have much to discuss."
Matthias was on his fifth glass of wine, he was livid, and it wasn't helping Klaus' own growing anger since the two could feel one another's emotions.
"I'm rather enjoying my evening." Finn told them.
"Well, I'd rather enjoy you getting to the point." Klaus told him in annoyance.
"I had nine hundred years to learn to be patient. Although, I am curious why you kept me daggered in a box for so long." Finn said, and Matthias stiffened.
"You were daggered from being am ever -simpering sycophant. Did mother bring you back from the dead so you could wash her knickers?" Klaus asked with a smirk.
Klaus knew how to make Finn angry, and he succeeded when Finn snapped. "She raised me because I was treated unfairly! Cheated of all but the smallest portion of my life! Elijah, Matthias I can understand such cruelty coming from him, but I always thought of Elijah as being the compassionate one. Matthias, you were the only one who didn't treat me like they all did, you loved me. What did I do to deserve you two turning your back on me? Were you afraid of Niklaus? Are you still? Or perhaps jealousy is what kept me locked in a box. You coveted the duties of the eldest brother, in which case you had near -on a millennium to fix the problems of this family, and instead, produced nine centuries of failure."
Finn turned away from them and rested his head on his hands, Matthias knew that Finn always hated how Elijah acted like the eldest brother to everyone when no one treated Finn as such. Finn was always annoying to them, lingered around their mother when he wasn't with Matthias, but Matthias knew that he would choose Finn over Elijah any day.
"You might reside -somewhat parasitically, I might add- in another body, but I assure you, in nine hundred years, your tedious sentiments remain quite the same. You see, Finn, like father, you've always despised our supernatural existence. Father, of course, slaughtered and consumed his own, whereas you became pretentious and dull. Much like this meal. I will not ask you again, where is mother?"
There was a moment of sickening silence, a moment that Matthias wanted to be over but then he heard her. The sound of his mother approaching, and he was done with another glass of wine.
"Oh, my darling son." Finn stood to his feet and walked up to her. "I've missed you too."
"Bullshit." Matthias cut in making Niklaus smirk while Esther frowned at him. "Sit down before I trap you in that damn body and kill you along with it."
"Why don't you say what you came here to say, so this wretched night can end?" Klaus said and Matthias nodded in agreement.
"It pains me that you three look at me with such disdain. I wish you could see that my every action has been to protect you." Esther said.
"Protect us?" Matthias laughed. "Where were you then when Mikael was beating Nik and I black and blue for being weak?" He asked her and Esther bit her lip. "Where were you when Klaus and I nearly got eaten by the wolves because Mikael said we needed more motivation to survive? Where were you when I almost drowned in the lake because Mikael said the best way to learn to swim was to go headfirst?"
Matthias was listing every single moment that he could where his mother wasn't there. Much like his other siblings, she was afraid of Mikael but not because of why they were afraid, but because she had cheated on him.
"Were you protecting us when you tried to kill us?" He asked her sharply. "Was it when you had Alaric turned into an upgraded original linked to my pregnant girlfriends life?" At this revelation, their heads all snapped at him in shock. "When have you ever protected us?!" He shouted at her.
Klaus then cut in as well, "You actually believe that what you've done was protecting us?" Klaus asked her. "I knew you were a liar, but now I see you're utterly delusional."
"If you can forget the hatred that you cling to and remember all the times I've mended and healed you." She said and Klaus let out a laugh alongside Matthias. "Elijah, do you recall the day Niklaus challenged your father to a duel? Did I leave your brother to die alone? What did I say, when you came to me and asked me to help him?"
"That you would rather die than to see any of your children suffer." Elijah told her.
Matthias frowned and Klaus did as well.
That memory wasn't a great one for them, but it was one that held some good. Niklaus had scared Mikael that day and it wasn't a look that he would ever forget.
"The jewelry." Klaus said and Matthias' heart dropped. "It wasn't spelled to protect us. It made us weak."
Matthias had received a bracelet from his mother instead of a necklace, only he had discarded the bracelet immediately after getting it because he felt sick whenever he wore it. Now he knew why.
"Mikael knew." Matthias let out a bitter laugh. "Mikael knew that day, he knew the kind of anger that Niklaus held meant that it was true."
"I sought to protect you from yourself." Esther pathetically defended herself. "If you had killed your father in that duel, or anyone else in the course of your life, you would have activated your curse."
Klaus slammed his hand angrily against the table. "You ruined me! You left me to suffer at the hands of a father who valued only strength."
"I kept you from becoming a beast for as long as I possibly could." She tried again.
"Oh, you lied to me to hide your own transgressions because of your own fear!" He shouted at her before slamming his fists against the table and standing. "My whole life, I sought the approval I was denied by the man I thought was my father! You turned me into the weakling he hated." Elijah and Matthias stood as well, Elijah started pacing. Esther looked down, but Klaus wasn't having it. "Look at me!" She looked back up at him. "You rant and you rave about the monster I have become, but you, mother- you are the author of everything I am."
Esther remained silent, Matthias didn't miss the look that she gave Finn before suddenly she faints, but Elijah catches her.
"She's gone." Elijah said.
Elijah took a moment before rushing at Finn, only for Finn to stop him and magically push Elijah away from him and over the table. Matthias only finished off his wine as Klaus rushed Finn as well and grabbed him by the lapels of his suit jacket.
"Where is she?!" He demanded.
Finn lifted his hand and in an instant he had Klaus falling to his knees and onto the floor. Matthias raised a brow and had to admit that he was impressed, but it didn't simmer the rage that he was feeling.
"Matthias." Finn started but was cut off with his head turning to the right.
Matthias glared at his older brother, the anger he was feeling only growing as he knew that Finn didn't have a choice right now. "I want to be angry with you, I do, but I also know mother's magic like the back of my hand, so I know that you are only here because she allows it."
Finn wiped the blood from his cracked lip and looked at Matthias with an apologetic look. He didn't have a lot of time. The minute Esther was in her new body, the hold she had on him would return. "I adore you Matthias, from the minute you chose me over Elijah, but she has her hold on me. Forgive me."
Matthias didn't get a chance to speak before his neck was being snapped and it all went dark.
• • •
in case y'all forgot, Matthias adores Finn and would never actually want anything bad to happen to him, but in this moment, he was raging and couldn't help but punch Finn.
but yes, it was now been revealed that Matthias could've had a child! no one knew about the baby but Elena and him, plus the Salvatore's in the prelude but Matthias never told anyone else, that was something of his to grieve and mourn over on his own.
till next chapter!
- m a r i e