* . ⸙ @devilfated slides a note across the counter [...]
❝ do you think you would have liked me if we met back then? ❞
THE QUESTION LANDED HEAVIER THAN ITS HANDFUL OF WORDS SHOULD HAVE. Camille let it sit for a moment before she touched it. Back then. As if she had a then to set it against. The honest answer was that she didn't know what he'd been, only what he was now, which was a man who could ask a thing like that and then watch your face too closely for the answer, as though the watching might catch something the words alone would miss. People didn't ask whether you'd have liked them once unless some part of them had already settled on the verdict and just wanted to hear you say it out loud.
“ Well, that depends entirely on who you were back then, doesn’t it? ”, she answered after a few seconds of silence, “ You're asking me to judge a version of you I've never met ”
Still, she turned the question over in her mind and looked at it from several sides at once, trying to find an answer. There was a trap folded into the question, and she could feel its edges. Say yes and she was being kind, or naive, picking the flattering answer because it was the easy one. Say no and she'd be judging a man on hearsay he'd supplied himself. A weird predicament to be in.
Deep down, Camille already knew her answer though. She had a long, unglamorous history of being drawn to the things everyone else had written off. The cracked, the half-ruined, the difficult. The ones that didn't bother pretending to be whole because the pretending had stopped being worth the effort somewhere back down the line. She restored taxidermy by candlelight and kept up conversations with objects no one else would let in the house ... a complicated man who had clearly done damage and carried it worse fit, if she was being honest, so well inside the pattern it was almost embarrassing. She wasn't sure that was a point in her favor. It might have been the least mysterious thing about her.
“ For what it's worth ”, Cami continued, lighter now, giving him a way down off the hook he'd hung himself on, “ the fact that you're even asking makes me think the odds are better than you're bracing for. Men who ever were truly unlikable almost never wonder about it. They're far too busy being certain of it ” A pause, followed by the slightest tilt of her head. “ So ... if you want a more detailed answer: Mind telling me about the Klaus I would’ve met back then? ”
| | | ๋࣭ ⭑ 𐂂 starring @devilfated ⅋ rebekah : angst prompts
↪ ❝ and maybe i am supposed to feel sad. maybe it’s karma. maybe i do deserve it ❞
HE SAID IT AND THE SILENCE AFTER FELT HEAVIER THAN ANY SCREAM. But Rebekah didn’t rush to fill it. There was something in the way he said it . . . quiet, like it had been sitting on his chest for too long and now it was finally slipping through the cracks. Her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass, not drinking, just holding it like something to do with her hands. Because if she didn’t, she might say something wrong. Something sharp. Something true.
Maybe it is karma and maybe you do deserve it, she thought bitterly, but it came and went like a ripple. Ugly, fast, and unspoken. The moment she thought it, she hated herself for it. So Rebekah pushed it down.
The man in front of her was still her brother. No matter what he’d done, no matter the betrayals, the violence, the way he twisted family into something brutal and binding, he was still Niklaus. The boy who used to hum lullabies to her when their mother was too cruel to stay soft. The boy who carved her name into trees and promised her forever. The boy who had turned into something monstrous because the world never gave him a chance to be anything else.
And she had loved him through all of it. Maybe that was the tragedy. Maybe that was her flaw. But she couldn’t help it.
So when she finally crossed the room and sat beside him, there wasn’t anger in her eyes. There was just the ache of too many lifetimes and the weight of a thousand moments like this one, moments where he tried to convince himself that pain was what he’d earned. She reached out and covered his hand with her own, grounding and steady before turning her head to look at him, her expression open but tired. So, so tired of this endless cycle they always came back to.
“ You say that like it’s some kind of balance being restored. Like you’ve earned misery by sheer weight of what you’ve done ”, her fingers tightened slightly around his, “ But feeling pain isn’t a punishment, Nik. It’s proof that you can still feel. That you haven’t burned every last piece of yourself to keep the world away ”
There was something fragile about the way she looked at him now, like she was searching for the boy he used to be beneath the wreckage. “ You’ve carried your guilt like a crown for so long, you’ve forgotten that remorse doesn’t have to ruin you. That maybe, just maybe, it’s the part of you that makes healing even possible ”
She drew in a slow breath, then let it out through her nose. Her voice dropped into something quieter. “ You think you’re cursed. That every terrible thing that’s ever happened around you is your fault. That you’re fated to ruin everything you touch ”
A pause.
“ I used to believe that too ”
Rebekah leaned forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped now. There was a flicker of heat behind her eyes, not anger, but something close to it. Fierce. Protective. Desperate.
“ Listen . . . what I’m trying to say is let yourself feel it. It’s okay to feel it ”, she said, her voice barely a breath, “ But don’t stay there. Don’t make a home in sorrow just because it’s familiar ”
