reverence, rewritten | k.m
⎯⎯ Niklaus is not hiding her out of shame.
He is hiding her out of worship.
warnings: kinda possessive, Elijah pov.
Niklaus had always been a creature of patterns—destructive ones, typically.
Vanishing for hours to paint in violent solitude. Appearing in parlors with blood on his collar and a smile like ruin. Drowning himself in the wine of women who meant nothing to him, burning cities and loyalties alike when the emptiness caught up to him again.
But this...
This was different.
Lately, there was a rhythm to him that Elijah had never seen before. A quieting. His wrath came slower, with hesitation at the edge of it. He declined the usual hunts. No bodies turned up in the river. He even let an insult slide at last week’s council gathering—something that would have cost a man his jaw not three months ago.
At first, Elijah assumed Klaus was simply plotting. That this stillness was the storm’s inhale before the tempest returned. But then came the absences.
Klaus would disappear for hours—just as he always had—but not to feed, not to destroy. And not a single soul knew where he went. Not Rebekah. Not even Kol, who took it upon himself to eavesdrop out of sheer boredom.
He stopped inviting people into his wing of the estate. Locked the door behind him without menace, without snide commentary. Just... quietly. Like a man closing a book.
And so, one evening, Elijah followed him.
It was raining—thin, silver rain that spidered across the windows and turned the gardens to watercolor. Klaus had left with no announcement, but Elijah had heard the softest creak of a door around midnight, and that was enough.
He walked without sound. He had learned stealth centuries ago, but he still felt like an intruder—not out of fear, but out of something quieter. Something reverent.
Because what he found at the end of the east wing hall was not the war god he knew.
It was Klaus—on the floor.
Not sprawled out, not brooding, not pacing like a caged animal.
He was seated cross-legged on an old rug, candlelight flickering across his face. And she—she—was curled against him, her legs draped over his lap, her cheek resting against his shoulder like she’d done it a hundred times before.
And Klaus...
He was brushing her hair back with both hands. Slow. Careful. Like he was afraid to startle her with even breath.
Elijah couldn’t move. Couldn’t announce himself.
He watched his brother commit a miracle with nothing but silence and two hands gently brushing a woman’s hair behind her ear.
She laughed—soft, low, private.
And Klaus smiled.
Not that feral grin he used as armor. Not the smug smirk that preceded bloodshed.
But something small. Unsteady.
Like he’d forgotten for a moment who he was supposed to be.
And Elijah—who had seen this brother burn the world down a dozen times over—felt his chest ache with something like disbelief. Or awe.
"Niklaus has many obsessions," he thought, standing just beyond the candlelight. "But this isn’t that. This is devotion in disguise."
He stepped back before he was seen.
He didn’t want to interrupt the quiet.
Because in all their immortal years together, Elijah had never seen Klaus Mikaelson ask for peace.
But tonight—without saying a word—he had chosen it.
And she was the reason why.
Not by design. Elijah doesn’t seek it out. But the rain returns a few nights later, and with it, so does that strange gravity—the pull that has haunted him since the first glimpse of that room, of her, of him—transformed by nothing but love’s proximity.
This time, the door is already slightly ajar.
No enchantment. No protection spell. Just a door left open, like an offering.
It feels wrong to intrude, but worse to pretend he doesn’t want to understand. Because something is changing in his brother. Something that silence cannot name.
So he stays in the shadows.
Inside, the world is quiet. The fire is low. The rain tics gently at the windows like a second heartbeat.
And there they are—again.
Klaus is on the floor, back resting against the velvet of an old chair, legs stretched out around her. She’s bundled in a blanket, tucked against his chest like she belongs nowhere else. His arms encircle her completely, like a sanctuary. A shelter. Not a cage.
She’s reading aloud at first—softly, sleepily—from a worn book Elijah vaguely recognizes. French poetry, maybe. The edges are frayed with love. But at some point her words fall away, lips parted in the beginnings of sleep.
And Klaus...
He takes the book from her hands. Turns the page gently. Begins reading where she left off.
His voice is low. Intimate. Not just speaking the words but offering them. Like a gift.
A love poem, Elijah realizes.
And not one Klaus wrote. But one he’s chosen. Which is somehow worse. Which is somehow better.
The girl—his girl—breathes deeper, sighs into him, and her head slips to his chest.
But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t shift. Doesn’t seem to notice the weight of time or the fire dwindling beside them. He just holds her there, arms wrapped around her body with the kind of patience Elijah never imagined Niklaus possessed.
The kind of patience reserved for temples. For prayer.
She laughs. Just once. A ghost of a sound, still half-dreaming.
And Klaus smiles like the world hasn’t been ending inside him for centuries.
That’s when it strikes Elijah hardest.
He’s seen his brother bring kingdoms to ruin. Cities leveled. Blood spilled for the pettiest of provocations.
But never this. Never peace.
Not with his chin resting against her hair. Not while one hand draws soft circles over the blanket at her hip. Not while he stares at the window as if the storm outside could never touch what he’s built in here.
There is no war in him.
Not now.
Not with her.
And Elijah, standing silent in the doorway, begins to understand something he never thought possible.
Niklaus is not hiding her out of shame.
He is hiding her out of worship.
Because gods do not parade what they pray to.
They protect it. Quietly. Desperately.
The night is long. Rain slicks the streets outside. The city hums with its usual quiet menace, but in the Mikaelson compound, there is only firelight and the weight of something unspoken.
Elijah finds him where he always is now—in that room no one enters but her.
Klaus doesn’t look up when the door opens. He doesn’t need to.
“She’s asleep,” he murmurs, gaze locked on the flames. His fingers curl around the glass in his hand, but there’s no tension there. Just the stillness of someone entirely occupied by a different world.
Elijah steps inside anyway.
The air is thick with heat and lavender and something even heavier—truth, maybe. Or guilt.
“She always sleeps better when it rains,” Klaus adds softly. “Says it sounds like something ancient trying to come home.”
He doesn’t turn around. He knows who it is. Of course he does.
Elijah clears his throat. Keeps his voice low, careful, like he’s stepping through a cathedral.
“You touch her,” he begins, “like she’s made of ash. Like she might vanish if you breathe wrong.”
Klaus is quiet. Too long.
“Because she’s the only thing I’ve ever held that didn’t bleed.”
It steals the breath from Elijah’s lungs.
He stares at the back of his brother’s head, the shape of him so familiar and suddenly so unknown.
“She’s not like the others, is she?”
Klaus chuckles at that—dry, humorless.
“No, brother. She is nothing like the others. She never begged me to stay. Never feared what I was. Never tried to twist herself into a shape that might fit beside a monster.”
Elijah steps closer, voice gentler now.
“Does she know what you are?”
Klaus finally turns. His face is all shadows and softness, eyes lit not by hunger or rage but something quieter. Sadder.
“And that’s worse, isn’t it?” Elijah says. “Because you’ve never let anyone see you. Not truly.”
Klaus takes a breath like it hurts. Like every word is pulling at something stitched shut long ago.
“No?” Elijah tilts his head.
Klaus smiles, small and broken and full of something raw.
“No. She just looked at me like I didn’t need to be a monster anymore.”
And that’s the moment Elijah realizes: this isn’t just love.
It’s absolution.
It’s everything his brother has carved himself open trying to earn—and never found in blood or war or power.
But somehow, she gave it to him.
Not by force.
Just by being there.
It happens without warning.
No announcement. No grand reveal. Just a quiet evening in the courtyard. The scent of burning wood, a fire flickering in the old hearth, wine passed between hands too used to power to speak much of it. A gathering like any other—until it isn’t.
The doors open. Klaus steps through.
Not in the way Elijah has come to expect. Not hanging off his arm, not paraded like a prize or a possession. She’s simply there—at his side.
Not ahead.
Not behind.
Beside.
And that, Elijah thinks, is what stops him cold.
Klaus carries himself differently tonight. Not cocky, not simmering with all that restless fury. He looks calm. Like a man who knows exactly who he is and doesn’t feel the need to say it out loud.
She walks with him, her hand resting lightly on his coat. It’s not a claim. Not a warning. There’s no performance in it. Just touch. Just closeness. Just choice.
For so long, Klaus has held onto things like they were slipping from him—clutched too tight, loved too violently. But this is different. This time, he’s not afraid of losing. He’s just there with her.
And she? She doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t shrink.
When someone new arrives—a face Elijah doesn’t recognize, eyes too old, too sharp—she moves without thinking, just slightly, just enough to place herself between Klaus and the stranger. Protective, not performative. As natural as breathing.
Klaus doesn’t bristle. Doesn’t push her back. Instead, he leans in and says something low. She answers with a laugh, soft and real, then rests her hand briefly over his.
It’s easy, Elijah realizes. Effortless. Intimate in a way that no one in this room has ever been with Klaus. Not without blood. Not without fire.
And she doesn’t flinch. Not once. Not when someone calls him the Hybrid. Not when she catches whispers of stories that should make anyone run.
She looks at Klaus like she already knows the worst of him.
And she’s still here.
Later, Rebekah catches the look on Elijah’s face and raises an eyebrow over her drink.
“She isn’t a secret anymore,” Elijah says quietly. “She’s his center.”
Rebekah smirks. “He let her in?”
Elijah nods once. “No,” he says. “He brought her.”
And when the guests begin to trickle out, when the fire has burned down to orange coals and the laughter has dulled into silence, Elijah finds him again. Alone now—almost.
She’s nearby, her fingers grazing the spine of a book left on the table. Like she lives here. Like she belongs.
“You brought her,” Elijah says.
Klaus doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pretend not to know what he means.
“No more hiding,” he says simply.
“She knows what that means?”
Elijah tilts his head, searching his brother’s face. “And she’s not afraid?”
Klaus looks past him then—at her—and the look in his eyes is something Elijah hasn’t seen since they were boys. Something soft. Something full.
“No,” Klaus says, voice barely above a breath. “She’s not the girl who tamed me, Elijah.”
“She’s the woman who saw me—and chose me anyway.”
hope you like it anon <<33 actually really liked writing it from Elijah's pov!
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