Entry tags:

!completed gdoc, !log, lydia martin (needstoscream), ~2021 april, ~~klaus mikaelson (orighybrid)

Who: Lydia and Klaus
What: Lydia's punishment, second session
When: Recently
Where: Above the bar
Rating: low

This should be easier. It was the thought that ran through her head. It should be easier because she'd done this before and survived. Really it wasn't as bad as other things, like Eichen House, so maybe she had no right to complain. The fact that she knew it had felt good, too, weighed on her because it felt like she was accepting she deserved the punishment - something she did not think she did.

Still, she showed up and was less nervous as she entered the room. She didn't think he'd kill her anymore, but Lydia did remind herself that she needed to watch what she said around him.

She closed the door behind her and turned to look at him. She'd been at fight club for Theo and she had seen what his sister was capable of doing to him.

"Hello."

--

Klaus had been there a bit ahead of time today, in order to set some things up. He hadn’t told anyone that he didn’t plan on drinking from Lydia tonight. Nobody would know that he didn’t. In fact, even Lydia wouldn’t know that he didn’t unless he wanted her to.

“Good evening,” he smiled at her, then crossed the room far too fast for a mortal person to be standing in front of her. He met her eyes, holding the contact in silence for a moment. “You will believe when you leave here that I drank from you as usual. There’s no mark because I healed it for you. While you are here, though, in this room, in my presence, you will remember that I did not. And that instead, I plan to paint you.”

***

There was the subtlest of gasps like on some level she registered he was moving quick and was about to do something, but other than that she just stood there and listened. Her pupils dilated and then she blinked.

Lydia blink again and she looked at the room, surprised, then back to him. "You want to paint me?" She paused and sounded even more surprised as she asked, "You paint?" Maybe it wasn't a fair question, but he liked to come off as scary and intimidating and painting… was not that.

--

“Yes, I paint,” he said, straight faced. Most people didn’t see him as the tortured artist he was, although if one thought about it a lot it wasn’t as strange as it sounded. He indicated the easel he’d set up on the other side of the room, and his paints.

“I want to see if I can capture your hair.”

He was still working on the color, and looking at it, he realized there were things he’d certainly got wrong about it. He was going to have to start over on that.

“And while I paint, we can talk.”

***

"My hair." Her hand went up to touch the bottom of her hair as she moved further into the room and took a seat. He wouldn't be the first to comment on her hair and Lydia did think it was one of her best features. She realized she felt flattered and she frowned briefly at herself before she recovered.

"Alright." Like she had a choice, but Lydia was definitely the sort to make it at least feel like she had a choice if she could help it.

Hands in her lap, she looked at the easel thoughtfully for a moment before looking back at him. "... I'll admit I'm surprised you want to talk to me at all."

--

She didn’t have a choice, but if she wanted to feel like she did, that was okay with Klaus. He pulled out a chair for her to sit in, the most comfortable one in the attic room. He wanted her to have a happy, comfortable expression, not a pained one from sitting on a terrible chair.

“Why is that? I’ve never met a banshee before. And it’s been a while since I had much of anyone to talk to.”

Somehow, he always did better when it was someone he’d compelled not to spread his secrets to the world.

***

That made for sense to Lydia. To her, she figured that meant that he wanted to talk to her solely because she was a Banshee. Probably he wanted to find some use for her that would benefit him. She wasn't sure how, of course. She couldn't control a lot of her abilities… not that she felt like admitting that to him.

She wasn't sure how exactly she was meant to sit - she never had anyone want to paint her before, after all - so she tried to relax and 'be natural' as ridiculous as that thought sounded to her.

"I guess I just assumed someone like me would be beneath you to talk to.” She meant it without any sarcastic tone it.

--

Klaus was never against finding ways that people could benefit him. In fact, it was important to him that people did benefit him. But there were many, many ways for that to happen. Being a subject of his painting was useful. Keeping him company was useful. Giving him blood was useful, but less so.

“Why do you think that?”

Klaus had spent a good deal of his life with everything he could possibly want, yes, but he hadn’t been born anything special.

***

Lydia knew she had to tread lightly. She assumed much like Scott and the others that Klaus could hear from her heart beating if she was lying and a part of her didn't want to lie anyway. If they were going to talk, then they should talk. She still didn't want to piss him off though.

Pressing her lips together, Lydia considered the best way to answer. "Considering the way you talk to people on the Network, it always seems like you think it's a chore to talk to people you think aren't your equal. Or if not a chore, that you're humoring them." She thought of a few times she'd read it that way. She wondered if Klaus saw it that way now, though. Or maybe like Malia, Klaus had a hard time socializing properly.

"And it's not like I've done anything in particular to garner your favour." The opposite was true, in fact.

--

Socializing was not particularly easy for Klaus. His childhood had been difficult and painful and he’d never really had a lot of friends. Being an Original - and the scariest of the bunch - had given him something to leverage over them, a way to interact. And yes, that was how he generally had been social. That, or doing like he did now - using compulsion to talk to people so they couldn’t share his secrets or embarrass him for being honest. Love and trust were things that had been in very short supply in Klaus’s life. Freya and Hope were the only ones here who deserved those things entirely from him.

“I grew up a bastard,” he said. “With a father who hated me and a mother who wanted to keep me weak. I spent my whole life trying to be accepted.”

And nobody ever had, not really.

***

"Why would she want to keep you weak?" Her mother was not like that. If anything, Natalie Martin had instilled the sort of strength needed from an attractive female. It wasn't perfect and she often came off as a cold bitch, but it made her strong.

She paused. "...were you like this before you were turned into a vampire?" Lydia realized it sounded insulting and added. "Trying to be accepted, I mean." Well, she meant everything else too, but this seemed a nicer way to go about it.

--

Was he? No, not really, although maybe that part of him existed deep within. Niklaus had been a sensitive child, an artist, one who felt things deeply and wanted nothing more than to be accepted. To be loved. To impress his father and win his love. He was still like that, really, although a thousand years of hate and bitterness had buried the sensitive parts deeply.

“I was a viking,” he said. “We were not a peaceful people. We were not a people who prized sensitivity or weakness.”

He didn’t like to remember himself that way. He was far stronger now.

***

He did not strike her as a Viking. Of course, she knew she only really knew Vikings from books and TV and even the depictions from pictures back in the day could be incorrect.

"There's a reason why the Vikings died out. Strength isn't measured just in brute force. There are a lot of people who can outwit even the strongest opponent if they use their mind." Scott was a good example of this. While he was not the sharpest tool in the shed, occasionally he was able to figure out how to get around an actual fight which usually ended better than all our fighting. "Though at least the Vikings saw women as capable. Not every society seemed to think so." Even now it was a frustrating uphill climb.

--

“I should hope so,” he said, eyes widening a bit at that last comment. “My sister Freya is the most powerful witch I know. My sister Rebekah is terrifying when she wants to be. Hayley, the mother of my child, is the Alpha of her pack. And Hope…” His voice softened even though he didn’t mean for it to. “She’s the strongest of us all.”

Klaus had infinite respect for women. That was one thing good about him, anyway.

He grabbed a tube of oil paint and added a bit more orange to the color he wanted to use for her hair. It was going to take him a while to get it ready, to get it right. But he had all the time he needed.

**

His reaction and explanation were frustratingly interesting to her and she pressed her lips tightly together for a moment to remind herself she was technically being held prisoner right now. An agreed upon state, but one she didn't want to be in. Annoyingly, still, there was a soft voice that seemed intent on reminding her he wasn't hurting her at all. It wasn't lost on her the way he spoke about Hope either. For a brief moment she thought about Peter downstairs at the bar. It also wasn't lost on her that he didn't speak about his mother in that list.

She watched him mix his paint for a moment and then she brought her gaze to her hands in her lap. Her left palm up, she traced her index finger along the length of her hand from the tip of her middle finger to her wrist. It was a simple, innocent action and she didn't think twice about crossing that invisible like almost like a lowercase 't' though the line was slanted. When Lydia looked up, she wasn't even really aware she was repeating the two lines on her palm again. And again. Slow and not frantic, but there.

"You must be happy to have three of them here then." She wanted to tell him she was happy a lot of her pack was here now, but she was worried it might make them a target down the road if she said or did something wrong. Instead she went with a different sort of honesty, "... I often wish my mother was here."

--

His eyes were immediately drawn by the action and he recognized the rune immediately. It had a ridiculous number of possible meanings, but there was one which stood out to him.

“Do you feel trapped here?” He supposed it was a stupid question, since she most certainly was, but he wanted her to know that he understood. “Why Norse runes?”

He shook his head and returned to her comment.

“I am, yes. Especially Hope. I never got to spend the time I wanted with her. There were...things that got in the way.”

Evil things. Evil people.

***

Confusion spread on Lydia's face and then she followed his gaze to her hand where she was in mid stroke and stopped herself. She curled her fingers of her left hand into her palm and then released them like she was erasing a whiteboard or something. She swallowed and looked up. "I suppose I do." Trapped, she meant, though from her own doing. She concentrated on her hands until she was certain they wouldn't move on their own again. Traitors.

Lydia almost left it at that, but she couldn't seem to. She should, she told herself, pretend to know everything about the symbol she just did and make it seem like she was more powerful or in control or… something. Instead, she sighed with a touch of frustration. "I don't actually know what that was. It happens sometimes. Once I wrote out computer code. Another time Latin. I'm not always -" in control " - aware."

--

“It’s also the first rune in my name,” he said simply. “Did you pick that up from my mind?” She didn’t do it intentionally, he was sure of that. She didn’t even seem to know that she was doing it. It must be a strange banshee thing.

“How does that work?” he asked. “Being a banshee, I mean? Does being around me, a vampire, disturb you, as some would consider me dead?”

***

She bit her bottom lip as she regarded him for a moment. "It doesn't disturb me. But sometimes people like you can be… loud." It was the easiest way to put it. "Most of the time it comes either as visions or as sounds. Like I'll hear water dripping and that's because someone is about to die in a sewer where they can hear that sound. Sometimes I'll wake up from a daze and I'll have walked somewhere and found a dead body. Like with my friend Kenny." She gave him a pointed look.

"I've only started to get control over some of it, sometimes, and my screams… but sometimes it gets so loud it feels like my head will explode and I can't stop myself." Like when Parrish had to stop her from killing her friends after she had had a hole drilled in her head.

She let out a breath. "I was able to hear cries when I got close to you downstairs. I wasn't ready for it. Maybe I should have been. But you're the first vampire I've gotten that close to before and I also wasn't in complete control of my emotions." This was the closest thing she would get to actually meaning an apology to him.

--

Klaus didn’t apologize easily either, so he took it for what it was. Not that he’d comment, or let her out of her payment for it, even if he had changed what exactly that payment was.

“It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve lost track of how many people I’ve killed.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “At least a hundred thousand, possibly far more.” He said it casually, as if those deaths had meant nothing to him. Probably because they hadn’t. He was being very much on the conservative side with that estimate, too. That only averaged to a hundred people a year and usually it was much more than that. “It doesn’t matter much to me. Humans come and go, their brief flames quickly extinguished.”

Was he a monster? Of course he was. He knew that. It was nothing new.

***

Maybe it wasn’t the wisest course of action to suddenly give Klaus a cross and judgemental look, but it was a knee-jerk reaction. “Do people really mean so little to you, or is it some sort of emotional coping mechanism to remind yourself you’re all dangerous and powerful -” She opened her mouth to continue, but she stopped herself because calling him out on feeling insecure would probably not go over well and she probably already said too much.

Lydia took a breath and then breathed out, trying to sound more calm and reasonable. “What I mean is… what if someone thought that of Hope and you were powerless to stop them? What if you killed her future friend or boyfriend? And don’t give me that ‘she has a boyfriend’ cop out answer to the hypothetical either. The truth is unless you went around killing serial killers and objectively terrible people, you have no idea what those lives could have been or could have contributed to the world. Who would have grown up to make the world better or to invent something great or even just be a really good mother to a few children who don’t grow up emotionally messed up.”

Maybe she was looking at him with a mixture of judgement and anger, but there was hope there as well. Hope that maybe he wasn’t actually so terrible.

--

Klaus just stared at her for a long while. He wasn’t used to being challenged by mortals, and he didn’t even like it when his family did it. But he wasn’t going to hurt Lydia. She wasn’t even going to remember this conversation, so he knew he could answer the question completely honestly. That was a good feeling, actually.

“It’s a combination,” he said finally. “Human life often does not mean much to me. Humans are food. I rarely kill them when I feed, unless I want to, but there you have it. I need human blood in order to survive, and I’m not the sort who makes do with animals or drinking just enough to get by. But the largest part of the people I’ve killed have somehow threatened my family. Or their killings have been necessary for political reasons.”

Did he kill for fun? Rarely. But he did come up with plans that required people to know just how powerful and dangerous he was, and there was little that proved that more than killing a dozen or a hundred people and sending their family their heads in boxes.

***

The stare was a little unsettling because she wasn’t sure if she’d pushed too hard. She knew that she was meant to cower and bend over backwards to please him, or at least be so scared of him that she didn’t say anything negative, but Lydia was hardwired to speak her mind. It got her into trouble a lot of times, but it also got her out of trouble.

“There has to be some humans you like. You’ve lived long enough that I can’t imagine you didn’t at least know a few you didn’t regard as simple food.” Or maybe he didn’t, but even predators were complicated beings.

--

Of course there were, although he didn’t speak of them often. Cami wasn’t the first human who had captured his heart, although he usually refused to give it to someone who died so quickly and would inevitably break him.

“There are some,” he admitted. “Not all humans are terrible.”

But even if they weren’t terrible, they were brief.

***

She seemed a little appeased by the answer. Lydia couldn’t be sure how many ‘some’ was for a vampire/werewolf who clearly had both relationship issues and emotional baggage, but at least she could assume it was a handful which meant he wasn’t a total sociopath.

“Just like I'm sure not all vampires are terrible either.” She didn’t give anything away on her face as to which category she placed him under. She did, however, continue by saying. “Everyone’s complicated. Life wouldn’t be so hard if we weren’t.”

--

Klaus now had his paint mixed, and he stared at her, unblinking, for a long while before turning back to his painting and making a few broad strokes.

“Most of us are terrible,” he said, not seeming ashamed of that at all. “We’re predators, and humans are our prey. Most of us have lost our humanity a long time ago.” Klaus actually hadn’t, but he didn’t mind if people thought he had. It made things easier.

“Tell me about your family,” he demanded as he started on the smaller parts of his painting. It was a conversation that could keep him going for hours.

***

She supposed the same could be said for werewolves. There were the kinder ones, like Scott and Satomi, but then there were the ones who seemed to embrace the predatory inside them like Deucalion.

The question surprised her, but she quickly recovered. “Well…my parents are divorced. My father is a wealthy man, but in the divorce took most of it so my mother and I make due with what’s left over. I get my looks and charming personality from my mom.” She looked at him as if to say her mother, too, was a forced to be reckoned with. “Neither of them are supernatural, though. They barely know my IQ.” Although Natalie Martin was getting more of sense now that she was working in the school.

“My grandmother, though…” Lydia’s smile betrayed her. Lydia loved her grandmother above all else. “She was a banshee like me, not that I knew that until very recently. But she and I were really close.”

--

“And where do Banshees come from?” he asked, his eyes on his painting and not on her. “Since your grandmother was one, I suppose it’s in the blood?” He had tasted something different in her blood, but it wasn’t strong enough for him to really put a finger on. The part that made her a banshee? Perhaps.

“Ben síde in old Irish, or ‘fairy woman’,” he mused. “I’ve heard your keening for those I killed. It’s a vicious sound.” Especially to his extra-sensitive ears.

“Apparently there are more supernaturals in my world than even I knew of.”

Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure what this ‘Malivore’ pit was, but apparently it had stolen their memories of the myriad other supernatural creatures that roamed the earth.

***

“I only just recently learned how to control them. It’s not like screaming is enjoyable for me, but it does help relieve the… pent up energy, I guess you could say. It clears my head for a while.” She wished she knew more about the ‘why’ but it wasn’t easy to research the topic.

“My grandmother didn’t really know what she was, but she knew I would inherit it.” Lydia paused. “She was… she was great.” Her expression probably told more about the way she felt about her grandmother than her words did. “And then she was murdered.” She paused and then glanced down at her lap for a moment, looking at her fingers. Taking a breath, she looked back up at him. “But since she was human, I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Of course it mattered to her and her eyes showed it, but she couldn’t help but push that back onto him - a little Natalie Martin showing through.

Lydia couldn’t hold his gaze for long though after making her point and looked away shortly. “I’m sure we have vampires too. We’ve been learning it’s not just werewolves and banshees out there in our world too.”

--

There was a flash of sympathy in Klaus’s eyes, even if he forced it quickly away. He knew loss, human or not. He’d had a great deal of it in his life. He’d lost nearly everyone who had mattered to him, either through death or betrayal. The only person who hadn’t left was Hope, and she was the one that had mattered the most.

“It would have happened eventually,” he said. Truly, that was the way humans lived….and died. Why did they expect otherwise? He could have said something to ease his words, but what was the point? He wasn’t here to please her. She was there to please him.

“Look up.” He needed to get the particular angle of her face for his painting.

“Vampires are good at staying hidden, when we want to.”

***

“Eventually, yes, but she had a hole drilled into her head for being what she was and she was killed slowly and cruelly. There’s a difference.” Maybe Brunski had been exaggerating it to mess with her, but she didn’t think so. She was almost certain her grandmother’s passing had been very traumatic. The thought made her frown, but she looked up when he told her to and after taking a breath, she returned her expression more to neutral. Another Martin gift.

She wondered if they’d be showing up because Beacon Hills was now a ‘beacon’ again. She supposed there was no way of knowing until it happened.

“Does it get boring? Living for so long, I mean. Especially if you think so little of the major populous of the planet.” Lydia paused, thoughtful. “Though I guess there’s something to be said for experiencing things like the Italian Renaissance.” But then you had to experience all the bad things too.

--

“Living? No, not at all. There are so many things to experience.” Klaus had always loved his immortal life. He’d never for a moment considered taking his mother’s deal and taking a mortal body to live out a mortal life. He liked who he was, even if a lot of other people definitely didn’t. “I’d never choose to die, if I had the choice.” He hadn’t, though. He’d died for Hope, and he didn’t regret that.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother,” he said finally. He didn’t really like the idea of humans suffering - not ones who hadn’t hurt him personally, at least.

“Those who hunt supernaturals can be vicious.”

***

It took her a moment as she watched him to decide if she believed he was sorry or not. She decided he wasn’t the sort to placate people so he must have meant it on some level, even if he was sorry that she was upset by it than the actual death itself.

“I’ve met a few of them. Some just need to learn that not all supernatural people kill or are malicious. Most of us haven’t chosen to be what we are and we’re just trying to live our lives. But like everyone else in this world, not all hunters are willing to open their minds to that possibility.” She particularly thought of Gerard. “But it’s easier to hate things that scare you or are different than you.”

--

“That is the plight of humanity throughout history. There is always hatred of the other, no matter what that ‘other’ might be.” Klaus had seen this in all its forms, from slavery to genocide. It had always disgusted him, the cruelty humans were capable of. And yet they condemned vampires. Hypocrisy to the fullest extent. Of course, his father had hated him before he was a hybrid. He’d hated him for the fact that he was a bastard, because his very existence was proof that his mother had not been faithful.

“I did not choose to be what I am, either,” he said. “I wouldn’t change it now, but I was not given a choice.”

***

She wanted to tell him that you couldn’t choose what you were, but you could choose what you did with your life, but she thought she had pressed her luck enough for one day. Lydia settled for something else. “Madison Valley seems to be like the sort of place you can reinvent yourself. Make new choices.” Better choices, though she didn’t say that either. “I’m seeing someone who did just that, actually.”

--

He raised an eyebrow. “Ah yes, this ‘Theo’.” He knew nothing about the werecreature that Theo was but he’d read the network enough to know that he was dating Lydia.

“Don’t move. I want to get your chin at just that angle.”

***

She didn't move, though she wondered even more now what the portrait looked like. She assumed he was good at painting as he had time to perfect the art form.

"Theo is from my world too." It was complicated that they decided to date, but Lydia wasn't regretting it. "You know, back home, he made some terrible choices, but here he's trying to be a better person." Yes, she was inferring he should too.

--

Klaus might have understood what she was implying, but he chose to ignore it. Both she and this Theo were children, mere infants compared to him. What did they know of his choices?

“When you leave,” he said, completely changing the subject. “You’re not going to remember any of this. You’re going to believe that I drank your blood.”

***

She exhaled, but not so dramatically to make a sound. She didn't have a retort for that right away, though she thought about it not for the first time today. "Have you done this before? With me, I mean…. Even if I won't remember it, I'd like know."

--

“With you? No, not yet. But I will do it again, the next time you’re here. I can’t have people believe that I’m not doing what I said I’d do, even though I’m not terribly interested in drinking your blood.”

He paused, and put a few finishing touches on his portrait. He’d work on it again later.

“But I have done it before to others, yes.”

***

She folded her hands on her lap. Lydia almost said 'wouldn't want people thinking you're capable of kindness' but she held her tongue. "I suppose I should be both insulted and thankful at the same time." She paused, then reconsidered, her voice and tone softening a little. "... Thank you."

--
He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. He wasn’t used to people thanking him. It was a really odd concept. But then he nodded, accepting it.

“I have no wish to actually hurt you. I never have. I’m not the monster most people think I am.”

***

“But you let them think you are.” Which she supposed was a way of staying ‘safe’, but she didn’t think that you needed that sort of reputation here in Madison Valley otherwise she knew of a few people who would be playing the hardened bad-guy image. “Must be exhausting to keep that up all the time.”

--

“Yes,” he said, simply. He didn’t know if he needed it in Madison Valley, but there were enough people here from home that he couldn’t simply act...soft.

“Not really,” he said, as he started putting the caps on his oil paints.

“You may go.”

***

She tried not to roll her eyes, but was only half successful as she stood up. She was half tempted to say ‘yes your highness’ or some other form of overly subservient gesture, but she didn’t, partly because she thought Klaus might like it more than actually see the sardonic point of it.

“Next week, then.”

Lydia paused, looking at the canvas that she couldn’t quite see from her angle. She wanted to know what it looked like, even if it might not be done yet, but she didn’t want to ask either, so she forced herself to turn toward the door instead.

She paused at the door before pulling it open and walked through. Once the door closed on the other side, Lydia let out a sigh, rubbing her wrist idly before headed toward the stairs.

--
Klaus smiled a bit as she left, and covered his canvas. It was looking good, but there was still a great deal of work to be done on it. He would have plenty of time in their following sessions to finish it.

***