Isa was in a great mood. Between the sinfully good time she and Nik had last night and the fact that they were on their way to intimidate and threaten Stefan with the possibility of torturing him, why wouldn't she be in a good mood?
They rushed up to him, alone in the woods, Nik holding his arms behind his back and Isa with a hand to his throat, nails digging in. She'd painted them blood red for this occasion. "In what world do the words, 'tell no one,' mean tell your brother and every teenage sycophant in town?!" she snarled at him as he fought their grip, a very, very futile effort.
"The secret's safe. No one who knows about the cure will endanger us. Trust me, you know that I want to find it more than anyone else," he grunted through her grip.
"You've lied to me far too many times for me to trust you, Pet," she fired back.
"But you can always make yourself useful by finding some more vampires for Jeremy to kill before my lovely Isa and I are tempted to offer you up as a victim," Klaus growled in his ear.
They let him go, the boy grunting as his chest heaved.
"And try and keep this one to yourself, or I will freeze you from the inside. And ask your brother, it's not a pleasant way to die," Isa threatened. "Unlike this," she continued before she snapped his neck, letting his body fall to the floor. "And there's a lot more where that came from."
Nik grinned at his wife before he placed his hand on her back. "Save that energy for later, love."
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Isa was in a royal blue, halter-neck dress, with gold heels as she walked into the Miss Mystic Falls Pageant on Nik's arm. Nik who was in a simple suit with a blue tie to match her dress, a very Elijah look, minus the tie, if Isa was being honest.
They had stopped near Caroline who was staring at Tyler, walking in with Hayley on his arm. The wolf was in a very tacky orange dress and black heels. The dress was short and strappy, with a bit of a low neckline.
"What was that modern term again?" she asked Nik before answering her own question. "Oh right, what a slut." Nik laughed at her and she knew that Caroline had heard her too. "No, but I'm not just being mean. Who wears such a low-cut, short dress like that? And in orange too?! How tacky," she said, and Nik handed her champagne from a passing waiter's tray.
"Pace yourself, love, the day has only just begun," he suggested as they moved over to where Hayley had put on the Miss Mystic crown and was mocking all the pageant girls.
"You don't want to do that. These girls will cut you. They have nails," Tyler warned as Hayley bit her lip as he spoke.
"I have claws," she said lowly.
"Only on a full moon," Isa's voice interrupted and Hayley put down the crown as they faced each other. You could feel the tension between the two, it was merely a matter of who would pounce first.
A matter that wasn't addressed as Caroline's voice echoed through the outdoor speakers and Nik pulled Isa away, nearing the dance floor. "Hi everyone. I'm Caroline Forbes. And as the reigning Miss Mystic Falls, it is my honour to introduce this year's Miss Mystic Court!"
People cheered as the girls walked down the stairs to their escorts and then onto the platformed stage.
"Rebekah would've loved this," Isa sighed, a wave of nostalgia hitting her out of nowhere.
Nik kissed her temple. "You can call her if you miss her," he said.
"She'll be back soon. And she'll be so annoyed that she missed this drama," Isa grinned as she watched a girl in a red dress run off as she reached the bottom of the stairs, only to have no escort. And she watched as no one bothered to go after the girl as they began with the dance. And as they glided across the dancefloor, Isa was struck by a memory. "Does this remind you of -"
"The bonfire dances we used to have?" Nik finished. "Albeit these are a little more formal, but I remember twirling you around the fire."
"And nothing else seemed to matter," she recalled. "How you noticed me when I'd been invisible all that time, I'll never know." She gasped as her husband dropped her into a dip, his hands splayed across her lithe body.
"You saved me. You've saved me every day since we met. Saved me from going insane in this very big and sometimes very lonely world," he said, and she smiled as she puckered her lips slightly, Nik easily complying as he placed his lips on hers. They pulled away after a time, content in each other as Nik righted her and they watched the girls waltz.
But Isa's attention was captured as she heard the conversation that sparked between Elena and Caroline. Actually, it was more of an argument. "Are you hearing -"
"Hearing and enjoying," Nik answered a smile on his face.
"How about we go enjoy from a closer distance?" Isa wondered aloud and her husband's response was a kiss to her head as he slipped his hand in hers and let her lead the way.
"How did I become the bad guy?" Caroline said aloud as Elena walked away from her clearly upset.
"Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault that she's siding with him on everything, I'm assuming?" Isa answered.
Caroline blanched for a second. "How did you know?"
"Well, we have eyes. Ears too. Not to mention a thousand years of experience with manipulative doppelgangers," Nik remarked.
"It'll make sense eventually," Isa said cryptically before she saw that couples were moving onto the dance floor now that the pageant girls had finished their song. She turned to her husband. "Dance with me?"
His smile was one of pure happiness. "After all these years, you still ask," he laughed as she led him onto the floor, Caroline slightly jealous of the fact that she didn't have a partner, and her current romantic partner was currently dancing with another woman.
"Why take the fun out of it?" she smiled as he swept her up into a smooth waltz, their bodies pressed closely together as their eyes met, every once in a while, drifting down to their lips. And as if they were humans again, dancing around a big bonfire, they danced as if they were the only two people in the world.
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The day after Miss Mystic Falls had been blissfully quiet. Rebekah had called. She'd seen Elijah and had been on her way back home when she'd decided to take a delayed route. She'd said if she was to become human, there were things she wanted to do as a vampire that she'd never done before. Nik gave her his blessing, so long as she checked in every day, she was welcome to go and live her life.
Now, Nik again stood painting a piece for charity as Isa sat on a sofa nearby dressed in bike pants and Nik's t-shirt, smiling as she went through the photos on her camera of the last day. Her smile had instantly dropped when she heard footsteps and smelt a familiar cologne, a repulsive cologne but familiar, nonetheless.
"It looks like a giant snowflake," Stefan judged as he walked into the room, uninvited.
"It's obviously an expression of post-modernism, you daft idiot," Isa said from the sofa not even bothering to look up, but she felt her husband's eyes on her.
"You understand me," he smiled before returning to place the final strokes on his piece. "It's my donation to the Winter Wonderland Charity Event," he explained, and Isa pouted. She'd created a collage of photos of the town, semi-winter themed as her donation. It looked beautiful but she thought it was nothing compared to her husband's artistry.
Stefan had frowned as Klaus handed off his painting to a hybrid to deliver to the Mystic Grill. "Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves, you know?" Stefan said.
"And we aren't American," Isa retorted as Nik smiled and said,
"What is the point of my hybrids being sired to me if I can't maximize on the benefits of free labour?"
Stefan said nothing and Isa grew bored as set her camera down and sped to Stefan, slamming him into the wall before her hand delved into his chest, feeling his heart trying to beat as she held it. "A little tighter and your heart explodes. Give me one reason why I should let you live."
He grunted before saying, "Elena is sired to Damon!"
Isa instantly let him go as she turned on her husband, pointing a bloodied finger at him. "I so called it!" she exclaimed as Nik had a finger pointed at her just the same.
"No, you didn't! I did!" he contested.
"No! You said they were going to sleep together. I said they were sired. I win!"
Nik sped at her, grabbed her round the middle as he faux bit at her neck, Isa squealing and laughing as he did. Neither of them seemed to care about the blood that became smeared on Nik's shirt sleeve.
"Ok, I didn't come here to see this," Stefan groaned, as his chest healed and Isa's smile fell.
"You didn't have to come. You weren't invited," she said as Nik placed a kiss on her neck.
"As you can tell, we intuited as much," Nik said and Isa cleared her throat, making Nik sigh. "Isa intuited as much."
"Which means I need to find the cure now more than ever. And here you are, making bets with your wife and painting post-modern snowflakes," Stefan sassed.
"We've delivered, Pet," Isa retorted.
"We retrieved the Hunter's sword from Italy, which we'll use to decipher the map hidden in the Hunter's Mark," Klaus continued.
"You were the one who was supposed to deliver the hunter and his mark," Isa finished.
"Jeremy's the Hunter. He has to keep killing vampires to complete his mark, but we can't quite figure out how to keep him from killing us."
Isa laughed. "That seems like a you problem," she said as she moved back to the sofa and her camera.
"And the reason why I feel perfectly justified, having some fun with my wife and doing some charity work," Nik reasoned.
"Or maybe you're lying about having found the sword," Stefan said and Isa's glare was deadly as her rage grew.
"You are the last person to accuse someone of lying," she warned darkly.
"Why would we lie, Stefan?" Nik asked as he moved over to the safe, spun the dial a couple times - their wedding date - and pulled out the old blade. "The hilt acts as a cipher, which we'll use to decode the marks on Jeremy's tattoo when he's killed enough vampires to complete it," he explained setting the sword down on a coffee table in front of his wife and sitting down carefree, next to her as Stefan picked up the blade.
"I heard you moved out of your house," Nik smiled. "Bit of a martyr move. Hmm?"
"He probably just couldn't deal with the fact that Elena loves Damon now and probably slept with him the second he moved out," Isa taunted and Stefan smiled sarcastically as he put the sword down.
"I'm not here to bond," the Salvatore said, and Isa laughed again.
"Oh, on the contrary," Nik began. "I think we're the best friends you've got right about now."
"I use the term friends very, very loosely but yes, quite possibly the only friends you have," Isa agreed.
Stefan Salvatore looked defeated in that moment.
*****************************************************************
The Winter Wonderland Charity Event had been dreadfully dull. A knock-off Christmas. But their night was about to take a drastically different turn and Isa was ready to turn her white cocktail dress blood red.
While Tyler may have thought he was smart, he really wasn't discrete. Isa knew all about the plan to try and jump Klaus into his body and then bury it in concrete so the hybrids could escape. And even if she didn't, Hayley had tipped them off. Turns out she was only using Tyler for her own personal gain.
Nik stood, armed with the Hunter's Sword while Isa was unarmed, she was deadly enough on her own, especially when made angry. And just thinking about what Tyler tried to pull made her angry enough as she ripped out the heart of 1 of the 12, a woman screaming as his body fell to the ground. It actually felt relaxing as they tore out hearts, ripped out necks and hacked off heads. 2 against 11 wasn't exactly great odd but the couple had faced far worse odds.
The duo worked in perfect harmony as the hybrids dropped like flies. Nik threw the sword, impaling a hybrid into a tree. Isa then ripped the sword out as she swung it and decapitated another. They were covered in blood. Most of Isa's dress and face along with Nik's white dress shirt, that he wore half-buttoned under a black blazer, and his own face was spattered in the warm red liquid.
Few tried to flee whilst the others attacked, but neither got very far. And soon all twelve of the hybrids lay dead as their killers rolled out their muscles and wiped the blood from their eyes. Isa then moved to wipe some of the blood from Nik's face as he just gripped the sword tightly in his hand. "I know you're hurt, that you're disappointed in them. But we still have Elena's blood stashed away, we can make more if we really need to. And we won't have another Tyler Lockwood this time. They'll know their place," she reasoned softly, and she could feel his hands start to tremble.
"Please, don't leave me," he asked, his voice so small.
"Never. Never will I leave you," she promised pressing a small kiss to his lips before slipping her hand in his free one and tugging him along.
"Come on. There's one more person we have to kill."
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"Good evening Carol," Nik greeted as they approached the mayor in the empty square, both of them still in their formal, blood-covered attire as Isa held the sword, letting the tip trail along the ground behind her. "Are you looking for Tyler?" he asked. "I'd like a little word with him myself."
"Klaus, please," she begged. "Don't hurt him. He's my son. He's all I have."
"And you, dear Carol, are all he has," Isa cooed as she looked down at the woman who was seated on the edge of a fountain as she nursed a glass of champagne. "There is a beautiful symmetry to that, don't you think, my love?" she asked as she twisted the sword in her hand.
"Indeed, there is," Nik agreed before he grabbed Carol by the neck and shoved her head into the cold water of the fountain. The breath he exhaled as he held down a flailing Carol was truly calming as the Mayor struggled to breathe. She splashed and struggled before she just became limp, water filling her lungs and her heart stopping.
"It's nothing personal, Carol," Isa said to her dead body as her husband wordlessly took her hand and led her home.