25: Fix You

A/N: For Jessica, who is feeling a little under the weather right now.


He was overlooking the devastation from his window and how everyone bonded together in clearing up the mess. Jeri had sealed Bella and him into his chambers. He wasn’t even able to go out to his balcony and Klaus felt as if he was being punished for Bella’s indiscretions. Sighing, he turned to her as she stripped out of her clothes in the middle of the room and dumped the bloody clothes in the wastebasket.

“I’m going to take a shower, do you want to join me?”

“Shouldn’t you go to bed, love? You’ve had an exciting day, and the sun’s about to come up.”

Bella shrugged. “Shower first and then sex, maybe?” She winked at him before walking towards the bathroom. She turned on the faucet, broke through the protection and set it for a little bit warmer and stepped underneath it, washing the day off her as she happily sighed before letting out a scream of agony.

Within a second, Klaus was standing in the bathroom, a frightened look on his face and ready to do whatever was needed to help her. Bella couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, your face! The look on your face! It’s hilarious!” She hiccuped. “Oh, so funny!”

“That’s not funny.”

“Oh, stop being such a sour puss. Get undressed and join me. The water is nice,” she grinned as she held out her hand for him. “Let’s have some fun, Klaus. You and I, we can’t go anywhere. Let’s kill time before we go to France.”

“We’re not going to France, love,” he said as he got out of his clothes and joined her, not really wanting to reward her for her trick to startle him – but there wasn’t much else he could do at the moment. He could get angry with her, wait for her, give her the silent treatment, but that wasn’t ideal. There was no doubt that Bella would become a handful.

“Why not?” She pouted as she stood on her tiptoes and put her arms around his neck. “You said we could.”

“I would love to take you to France, but not like this.”

“Not like this?” she blinked at him as she let go and crossed her arms over her chest as the water fell on them. “Not like what? There’s nothing wrong with me. In fact, I feel normal. I’m doing great! I feel great! Do you like the version of me who feels too much? Who’s afraid? Who panics easily?” She huffed as she grabbed the shampoo and started to wash her hair. “Such a whiney little bitch, that was me.”

“Bella.”

“What? Do you honestly like me more when I’m like that?”

Klaus sucked in a breath and put a strand of her wet hair behind her ear. “What makes you think that I don’t love that side of you? I love all of you, Bella. All your little adorable quirks. I never pushed you to do things against your will but merely encouraged you to try new things and if you didn’t want to do them, it’s fine by me. I don’t care if you don’t set a foot outside this compound. In fact, it eases my mind to know that you’re never far away.”

“That’s bull, how can someone as strong as you love something as weak as that?”

“Let’s not have this conversation under the shower.”

“I don’t care, let’s!” she said as she rinsed out her shampoo. “You deserve so much more than a broken doll, Klaus.”

“You’re not weak, Bella,” he muttered as he looked at her, watching the soap move down her body, making it slightly difficult for him to concentrate. “If anything, you’re the strongest person I know. You don’t mind showing everyone that you have your weaknesses and in turn, exposing those weaknesses to other people. That requires strength.”

“That’s stupidity.”

He smiled at that and nodded. “In some cases it is, but in your case? No. Absolutely not.”

“You’re being ridiculous now. This is a better version of me, and it’s here to stay so if you don’t want this, tough.”

“Now who’s being ridiculous? As I said, I love all of you.”

Bella huffed. “Clearly you don’t.” she pushed passed Klaus and started to dry herself off. “I’m not in the mood anymore, for any of it. We’re going to France.”

“We can’t, love. Jeri sealed us in.”

“Yeah, just until everyone’s had a good night’s sleep, yes?”

“No. Until you’re back to your normal self.”

Bella growled at Klaus as her eyes flashed amber and then red. “Sucks to be you then.”

~o.O.o~

On day two there was barely anything left of his study and his liquor. She hadn’t said much. She was much behaving like a bored cat, seeing if he responded if she broke his things, but he’d just watched her. They were just things, after all, and if she felt as if she needed to do this, then so be it. Trinkets could be replaced.

Bella was on a drunken tirade as she was spewing lies about herself, perhaps she believed them. It hurt him more to hear that she had such a low opinion about herself than to see his hundreds of years old table get smashed into pieces. He made sure he was in her line of vision at all times. She needed to see that he wasn’t going anywhere and that he wasn’t stopping her because that’s what she wanted. She wanted to be stopped.

Whenever Jeri or Kol threw in a few bags of blood, Klaus let her have as much as she wanted, he took whatever she left. The same with alcohol. She had polished off the bottles quite easily, and she was teetotal, but he hadn’t stopped her. Nor had he taken a drink himself, even though he could use one.

In turn, she didn’t turn violent against him but continued to smash his belongings instead. She had so much anger inside of her, and even though she switched off her humanity, deep down, she needed to rage. Killing her tormentors hadn’t been enough. No wonder. “Let’s break the bed,” Bella said, turning on her heels, barely able to stand on her own feet. “Break the bed with me, Klaus.”

“Are you sure?”

“I need to break the bed with you. I need it,” she walked over to Klaus and pulled him down for a kiss. “Don’t you want to?”

“Not while you’re drunk.”

“But I want you. I want you now, and I want us to break the bed. It’s easy like that.”

“No.”

Growling, Bella’s hands became claws, and she ripped up his shirt, drawing blood as her nails scratched his skin. “Please,” she said as she started to open his pants.

“No,” he said more forcefully. “You’re drunk, and I’m not. Something has to change. Either you sober up, or I get drunk.”

“Klaus!”

He dodged another attempt of her undressing him and watched her walk to the bed that she started to demolish. Leaning against the doorpost for a moment, he could see how unhappy she was, and at the moment, he didn’t care. Just because she had her humanity switch off, didn’t mean he had to do what she wanted.

He left her to destroy the bedroom to paint. She had tried to throw his easel out of the window, but it had bounced back and hit her straight in the head, causing her to throw it in the fireplace. It was quite the funny sight, but he was sure that Bella would think otherwise if she’d care about it.

She settled down somewhat on day three, giving up on her situation of being locked in. She had turned quiet and was sitting mostly with her back turned to him as she watched her handiwork with a proud look on her face. She had proven she was strong enough to destroy things. Would her old self do something like this? Nope. And it felt good.

There was a knock on the door before it opened, and Klaus turned around to see who it was. “Brother,” he acknowledged him.

“Niklaus, Katerina has sent word through her contacts that she requires our assistance. I’m taking Kol to see what she needs,” Elijah spoke quietly.

He growled in his hatred for the woman. “You will do no such thing.”

“Niklaus, please,” Elijah slightly smiled. “We’ve all buried the hatchet with her a long time ago. You released her from your anger towards her. If she requires our assistance, something has gone awry.” Elijah paused then and almost snickered. “It’s not as if you can stop me.”

“Elijah!” Klaus called after his brother as he closed the door. Bella was on him the moment the door clicked in the lock. She had jumped into his arms and had put her arms around his neck.

“Who is Katerina?” Her voice sounded playful, but her face said otherwise.

“You’re supposed not to care, you switched off your humanity,” he said with a tease.

“Look around, Klaus. I destroyed your chambers out of boredom. I’d rather have had a dozen of people to sink my teeth into, but you, and your family, are pretty adamant about keeping me here. So, who’s Katerina?” She dug her hands into his hair and scratched his scalp with her nails.

“An old friend,” Klaus replied as evenly as he could. “She used to be a witch before she turned.”

She looked at him for a moment and huffed. “That’s not all, the way Elijah spoke about her, she means something to you. And him.”

“She used to, a long time ago.”

“Did you have sex with her?”

“Didn’t we already discuss this, love?”

She pushed herself off of him and pushed him after landing on her feet. “We never finished discussing this.”

Klaus sighed as he tiredly rubbed his eyes. “Love, we’ve been talking about this, of course, I’ve bedded other women, I’m an old vampire, I do have my needs. I don’t understand why this angers you so.”

“I am angry because you should have told me! You. Not your brother but you!”

“But it’s irrelevant! Especially since you’re you and-”

Bella growled as she advanced on him. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she was getting very close to losing it. “Because I’m innocent?” She let out a huff. “I’m far from it, Klaus, and you know it. I don’t even want to start counting the many men who have used my body for pleasure because it simply disgusts me, and I’d rather not think about it. But you know all about that, I told you!”

“Then what difference does it make?” His feet got caught on the mattress that was now on the floor, and he tripped backward, Bella immediately launched herself on top of him, straddling his waist.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“Kol told you.”

“You didn’t tell me,” she growled as she ripped off his shirt and then sat up again, almost as if she thought of something. “This Katerina… it’s not Katherine, is it?” When she saw the look on Klaus’ face, she gasped. She got off of him and walked away from him, mood gone. “I’m going to kill Elijah! And Kol! They’re not going to help her out, are they? She was one of them, Klaus!”

“I know that,” he growled and walked after her. “That’s why I wanted to come with so I could bring you her head, but you had to switch off your humanity and have us get locked up in here.”

“Oh sure, blame me.”

“I’m not blaming you! I’ve chased her for 500 years because she ruined my chance of breaking my curse sooner and even though I reluctantly forgave her after finding another doppelganger; I have no feelings for her.”

She grabbed a piece of wood and threw it at one of the paintings on the wall, impaling the canvas on the wood. She winced when she saw what she had done; it had been a beautiful picture, and she now ruined it.

“You’re acting very much like a spoiled brat right now. Or an angry cat.”

“It’s Katherine!”

“What did she do to you that’s so worse than what they put you through?” He leaned against the doorpost as he saw her getting angrier. It was interesting to see how her turning off her humanity made her angry. Her walls, her defenses, were down because she didn’t care, but there was so much anger. If there was one thing he could understand, was anger. She didn’t get angry about him having a history with Katherine; she was focused on her so much that something must have transpired between them.

“Oh, no, you got it all wrong,” she said with a dark, humorless laugh as she started to pace the room. “You had a chance to kill her, but you didn’t. Instead, you gave her time to do whatever the fuck she wanted and up until Kol showed up, she was a regular in tormenting me!”

He sucked in a breath. He was wrong. So very wrong. Her anger wasn’t driven at Katherine per say. It was about him and what he had failed to accomplish so long ago. “What would you like me to do about it?”

She let out a frustrated cry and headed for his latest creation that was standing near the open French doors for more access of sunlight and kicked against it. The painting bounced off the invisible wall that Jeri had put up and hit her straight in the face. “Nothing! You’re stuck with me in here!”

“Exactly! Now let me look at that forehead of yours.”

She allowed him to approach, but once he was close enough, she growled and bit his arm when he reached for her.

“Cute.” He grabbed her tightly and pulled her against him. “Katherine won’t ever hurt you again, Bella,” he said, looking into her eyes as he tightened his hold on her. “If you desire to punish me for my hand in your torment, then do so.”

“No,” she murmured. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Why is that? You shouldn’t be caring about hurting me or not.”

“I bit you, didn’t I?”

He smiled a bit at her attempt at nonchalance, eying her curiously. His fingers still tight around her arm, unyielding in his willingness to let her go. “And unlike everyone else, I am unable to be driven mad by the venom of your bite. We share the same gift in that. I wonder what you were truly attempting… what was going through your mind love…”

“I don’t know, Klaus,” she struggled against him.

“Are you jealous?”

Bella huffed. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” he said with a smirk. “You’re afraid of me leaving you, the thought of me having had intimate relations with other women over the course of my life. It angers you; it makes you wonder if I’ll ever stray from you, and you do not want that.” He grinned. “You’re jealous.”

She growled at him, her vampire visage bleeding out as she tried to pull away from him again. “Fix me.”

“I thought you weren’t broken love,” he taunted, his eyes following hers. “You wanted to be stronger. Now you are.”

“Fix me,” she had her hands on his arms now, squeezing him as hard as he was squeezing her. “I don’t want to feel this jealousy. Fix me.”

Klaus frowned as he reached up to cup her chin to bring her face up to his. “You are not broken. You never were in my eyes Bella,” he told her. “I don’t know how to fix you the way you want me to. Remember? Kol was unable to compel you?”

“I am broken, I don’t feel anything but anger and rage, and I don’t want to feel like this. I want to go back to what I used to feel before they came. Fix me,” she begged as she almost crawled into him, her lips on his skin, desperate. “Please.”

He cupped her chin again and looked her in her eyes. “All you have to do is switch your humanity back on, Bella. Switch it on,” he knew he couldn’t compel her but he could try.

~o.O.o~

“Ugh, this place is a dump,” Katherine’s voice sounded. She was in the courtyard, Bella could tell that much. “It could use more color… and what the hell did you do to those tiles?”

Bella’s eyes grew large in surprise before wanting to get up, but Klaus pushed her back with a knowing smile on his face with a finger pressed to his lips. Time to shut up and see what happens.

“We had the pleasure to entertain some rivals a couple nights ago,” Elijah explained as he lead her to the breakfast room. “Come, Katerina, let’s have some breakfast. It’s not an easy task to negotiate with Niklaus on an empty stomach.”

“Where is Prince Charming, anyway?” Katherine said, boredom apparent in her voice. “Usually he’s the first one to greet me with an empty threat.”

“He has his hands full at the moment, but you can join him shortly,” Kol replied chipper. “In the meantime, I want you to meet Jeri.”

“What’s up?” Jeri smirked before kissing Kol. “You should have heard the ruckus last night. If there’s anything not broken up there, it’s a miracle.”

“Someone had a bit of a tantrum?” Kol asked playfully before sitting down and taking a bread roll from the plate. “Do they require a nappy change?”

“That’s enough, Kol,” Elijah said soothingly as he helped Katherine sit down. “I’m certain Katerina does not want to hear about Niklaus’ exploits.”

“Oh, but I do!” Katherine said with a smirk. “He always chooses his miserable conquests so well; it’s like watching a trainwreck happening.”

“And what would your excuse be?” Jeri said, raising an eyebrow as she watched her from across the table. She was in on the plan that Kol and Elijah had concocted, but that didn’t mean she had to be nice about it. “He did have a thing for you, as did stick-in-the-mud over here.”

“And who are you?” Katherine pleasantly smiled at her. “One of Kol’s whores?”

“Ladies, let’s not insult each other over breakfast. There is plenty of time to do that later.”

“I suggest we throw her into the pit now. See what Niklaus has to say about all of this,” Jeri said, her eyes firmly fixed on the pocket-sized vampire. She wasn’t much taller than Bella, but apart from the story they all knew, something about Katherine’s appearance grated on her. “Let her have her negotiation with him on an empty stomach, I just lost my appetite for breakfast. Oh, hey!” she smiled brightly at Peter as he sauntered in. “Now is not the time.”

Peter stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Katherine. “I can see that, my apologies,” he wanted to turn to make his escape, but Katherine spoke up.

“Wait, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Why not?” Peter replied, suddenly getting a hint of what the traditional vampires had been planning. It was not too late to save their plan. “Everywhere the prince goes, I go.”

“Nah, he wouldn’t be so stupid to come here.”

“Why not? Everyone knows that the Mikaelsons have power, and the Prince is afraid.”

Katherine was quiet for a moment before placing her napkin on her plate. “Does he have it with him?”

“Of course, Lady Katherine.”

She smirked before getting to her feet. “I will negotiate with Klaus now, and then I’ll want to meet Prince Edward. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen him.”

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2 Comments:

  1. Who knows? *grins* One more chapter left to post!

    Thank you for reading and commenting!

  2. Please tell me that Katherine gets whats coming to her? I hate her!

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