Chapter 08

1724

Myriam and her ladies were looking at the burning building with tears in their eyes. Débauche had been their home for nearly seven years, and now it was going up in flames. It wasn’t just their building, also those surrounding them, but it still hurt. Granted, it would give them a chance to rebuild the structure with the stone and mortar that had been introduced after the ships with people came over in the previous years, but it had been their home. Their sanctuary.

And a lot of Dark Objects that she had created to keep the place safe. They were now all going up in flames. She had tried saving some, but the fire was simply too much, and all she could do was to save her girls. She had no idea what she was going to do with them, perhaps put them in an empty house until her business was rebuilt, but whoever did this, was going to pay.

Myriam could feel the anger and rage course through her veins, and there was nothing she could do about it, apart from likely slaughter an entire village. Klaus still wasn’t touching her the way she wanted, but at least he spent time in bed with her. Thinking about it while the building turned to ash made her feel even angrier. One more year of Klaus not doing what she wanted and she’d leave.

But first, she needed to find the person responsible for this mess, and find a way to keep her girls safe. Of course, she had already sent some of her demons to eavesdrop on the community, but that was going to take some time until they’d come up with something. She knew for sure that it wasn’t done by any of the girls, or patrons, inside the building and it wasn’t an accident. Something had to be set on fire outside the building to cause this blaze.

Deciding that there wasn’t anything she could do now, she brought the girls to the inn and paid for their rooms and gave them their wages, plus some extra. The inn didn’t tolerate prostitution, and she didn’t want them to go out on their own. Myriam made them a promise that she’d continue to pay their wages even though there was no club anymore. She also promised them that she was going to make sure that it was going to be the first building to be rebuilt.

Upon arriving home, she found Kol talking to Klaus. “It may have been an accident, Kol, but that was Myriam’s business.”

“I didn’t know that!” There was a panic in his voice and a rage inside Myriam.

“Please don’t tell me that you were the one who left my girls homeless,” she said as she walked in the door. Her best friend, her soul mate, had set her business alight? Her heart shattered in a million pieces.

“Darling, it was an accident, I swear!” he cried out as he looked at her. “I had a feed, and I tossed the oil lamp like I usually do, and…”

“It hit my building!” Myriam flew into a rage, using the element of surprise to pin Kol against the wall. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? My girls were safe, Kol. I now had to put them up at the Inn, and I hope to God that nothing will happen to them when I don’t have them in a controlled and safe environment!” She pulled him away and slammed him against the wooden wall again, cracking the wall in the process. “The old part of the Colony, like our homes are built out of wood, and you know this. How can you be so careless?!”

“Darling, I’m sorry!”

“What can I do with that? Give my girls shelter? Eat it? Wipe my ass with it? That was the only thing that was truly mine. My project. Mine! And you destroyed it!”

“It was an accident!”

“I don’t care!” She then snapped his neck and jumped back as her friend fell to the ground, repressing a sob as she looked at Klaus, tears burning behind her eyes. Oh, she was going to hate herself for the next words she was going to say, but he deserved it. Any other she would have killed. “He needs time in his box.”

Klaus hesitated for a moment before getting the ash and the dagger out from one of the hidden compartments underneath the table. “Are you sure, love?”

She fisted her hands again by her side and nodded. “I won’t ask for his release. But he needs a timeout, he should have been more careful and he wasn’t. He destroyed what was mine.”

Klaus pushed the dagger through Kol’s chest, causing his unconscious body to gasp and slightly to move before his skin turned grey and his veins turned black. “I shall put him away then…”

“No. Leave him out in the sitting room on the coffee table for a couple days. He can be decoration as a reminder for Elijah or Rebekah not to mess with my things,” she warned and walked out, retreating to her room with a full bottle of alcohol for the privacy to cry for all the losses she suffered and to try to get shitfaced to forget the betrayal of her best friend.

Once Klaus had done as he was told, he quietly made his way up the stairs, hearing Myriam cry as she left the door open. Risking his own neck, he walked into the room and found her sitting on the bed, holding the bottle of alcohol in one hand and trying to wipe her tears with the other. He hadn’t seen her cry, ever, and he doubted that Kol had ever seen her cry.

He sat down on the bed and pulled her into his arms, to hold her close. He didn’t say anything, just allowed her to cry until she was done crying. Eventually, she downed half the bottle as she dried her tears and looked at him. “I want to continue Débauche.”

“Okay,” he nodded. “We will rebuild. I can help, if you like.”

“I had plans for the long run, but they burned. You are going to draw what I want so we can hire men to build it,” she said as she took another swig of her bottle. “I want to include a bar where we’ll serve alcohol, but it also has to be separate from the whores. I want more room for them.”

His eyes travelled to her bottle and nodded. “I can do that. You want a bar, and lounge of sort. A hostel for the girls?”

Her eyes lit up then. “Yes! I want them to have a workspace and a place for themselves on another level! Can we do that? Please?”

Klaus could not help but want to give her everything at that moment, drawing in a breath. “I can draw something up and see if you like it. It may take some compulsion to get it approved, but one way or another, I’ll make sure you get it. If for not watching Kol closer, I’ll do this to repair what was done.” He was apologetic for something he didn’t do that he wasn’t present for as he reached out to wipe her tears from her cheeks.

“You have nothing to apologise for,” she smiled at him. “It was his own actions that lead to this, and perhaps it’s fortunate that it happened to me and not one of the other businesses because then we’d have to do a lot of compulsion. But I’m still very angry with him. Maybe I should send a demon with him to make his dreams more like nightmares… Yes. I will do that. Tomorrow. Let him think he’s gotten off lightly.”

Myriam then crawled into his lap and softly brushed his lips with hers. “Daggering him wasn’t enough. Not pleasing enough.”

“You can do whatever you wish to him, love,” he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear as he looked her in her eyes. Oh, he was smitten, and he knew that he couldn’t push her away any longer. Her emotions were frayed, Kol’s betrayal had pushed her ever so close to the edge and if he was going to deny himself, and her, for longer, it was likely that there would be a point of no return.

“That’s not fair, Klaus,” she pouted as she dropped the bottle, spilling the alcohol on the floor. “Because I want to do whatever I wish to you and you keep refusing me. We’ve shared a bed for a few years now but other than a brush of your skin against mine… You’re all I have left now.”

He reached up and traced down the vein in her neck to the neckline of her dress. “Have I refused you yet today, love?”

“No,” she shivered as his fingers touched her skin and lit it on fire. “But I don’t want you to do this out of pity.”

“Myriam, if you wish to wait this time, then I will, but it is not out of pity. I too am tired of trying to avoid this, and I don’t want to be the reason you leave. Especially after Kol’s actions. I don’t ever want you to leave. So, yes, while my timing in succumbing to your relentless efforts and endless patience is inconvenient,” he said as he held up her hand with the ring he gave her. “I still want you for our eternities.”

She kissed him hard then, moving so she could wrap her legs around him as she pushed him down to the bed, kissing him needily as her heart had started to jump loops in her chest. Rotten timing, indeed, but she was going to take what she was given. And she wasn’t going to let him go for a very long time, either.

Rebekah came home and let out a cry of surprise when she saw Kol daggered on the coffee table. “So it was you who set fire to Myriam’s establishment? Or what else have you done, brother?” she sighed as she sat down next to him before her ears picked up on movement upstairs. “It’s about bloody time!” she cried out before she compelled one of the servants to see what food they had in the kitchen and otherwise to prepare dinner for the family.

~o.O.o~

1820

Thanks to a deal they’d made with the governor of New Orleans, they were allowed to stay at his mansion and feed as freely as they wanted to. All the man wanted was gold in return. Rebekah had fallen in love with Emil, the governor’s son and unfortunately, when Rebekah begged Klaus for Emil to turn, Emil died instead. Klaus had thrown him over the balcony right into the partying mass.

Myriam had scolded him for that while Elijah consoled the grieving Rebekah, because Rebekah deserved to love as well, and while Emil might not have been the brightest of choices, seeing as he was the governor’s son, after all, it had been wrong. When Emil’s funeral was a couple of days later, and Klaus saved a young slave boy from being whipped, she had enough of Klaus’ antics and yelled at him after returning home before she packed her bags and left.

There was no way that she was going to be a mother.

Myriam returned to the Old World, to her home in Florence and cleaning it up. Making it perfect again after years of decay and desolation. She released the demons who had protected the building for over a hundred years and made it her home. Her home, not Medici. She sold most of the artwork, statues, and furniture and had a lot of fun picking up new things to decorate.

She compelled ten humans to work for her as servants and to pamper her, Myriam felt like she had deserved a long, relaxing break from her husband. If he wanted to parent, then he was going to parent without her. She’d be a crappy mother, she couldn’t even remember her own mother at this point. It had been so long, and the only reminder she had of her was a painting that was still in Cadiz. Unless that home burned when Mikael set the village on fire. However, she didn’t want to visit Cadiz any time soon, as she had heard rumours of a revolt going on in that part of Spain and she didn’t want to get caught up with that for only one portrait.

But maybe she should have taken Kol with her, she thought as she sat one night with a glass of wine. Children had never been a subject of conversation. They were vampires after all, but it was something that never interested her beyond caring for her girls at her business. Her girls were in the good hands of Isabella. Myriam had turned her a few years after freeing her and becoming good friends. Klaus had been pissed off, but Myriam wanted friends of her own, and Isabella was the only person she sired.

Myriam spent her time tracking down some of the Medici family and see how they got on and loved that they were still thoroughly cursed. She managed to get a Medici witch from a different line to work for her and Myriam taught her how to make Dark Objects for her. Once Myriam felt she had enough, she made the witch into a meal.

During her time away from Klaus and her family she decided to pick up her habit of drinking vervain tea. It was horrible. Horrifying. It burned her so badly, but at least no one had to see how she was suffering for a little bit of more protection. Not that she believed that Klaus, Elijah or Rebekah had compelled her in the past, but this was for the future. She didn’t trust Elijah enough after all these years to not pull something like compulsion.

And unfortunately, her husband was a paranoid asshole who no doubt would try to compel her upon her eventual return.

Myriam wasn’t worried, though. Kol always told her that she could outsmart anyone she wished, and perhaps she had gotten a little complacent over the last 100 years. Myriam had felt safe and loved, protected. She had built herself a beautiful life with her family, and she barely worked hard these days. It had become more natural to do things as a vampire.

She spent the next 30 years in Europe. Occasionally travelling around – and yes, her mother’s painting had indeed perished in Cadiz, but she explored more houses that had been in her possession after taking her revenge on her family. And sold all of the valuables or gave it away to people who could use it.

When the demon who she had put on Katerina Petrova many years ago alerted her that her behaviour had become unusual, Myriam took her new toys and tea with her and went back to America. And back to Klaus.

1851

The mansion was far too quiet upon arrival. It had been dented over the years, no doubt of the various vampire fights inside the house, and the servers didn’t want to let her in at first, until she just ignored them and headed straight for the bedroom she used to share with Klaus. His scent was faint but still lingered, so she knew that he was going to come back at some point. The servants were still here.

To kill some time, she scattered some of her Dark Objects around the home for some extra protection and sat down on the porch, waiting for her husband to return while she sipped on a glass of wine.

“What are you doing here?”

She looked up to see her husband leaning against one of the pillars and broke out in a smile before flinging herself at him. “I missed you!”

He managed to pry her off of him and pushed her away from him. “Then why did you leave? You left me. You. Abandoned. Me!”

“You saved a child, and instead of putting him with a normal human family, you decided to raise him as your own son!” Myriam countered angrily. “Without consulting me, your wife! Because I would have said ‘no’!”

“That’s why you left? Because of Marcel?”

“Oh, that’s what you named him?” Myriam raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I’m not a mother and the last time I had one was over a century ago. You should have talked to me about keeping him and not simply assume that I was going to help you with the child! What did you do with him? Is he still human? No, you turned him, didn’t you?” The look on Klaus’ face said enough. Of course, he did. He had grown to care for the boy. “If you wanted to raise someone, something, we could have gotten a puppy!”

“You could have stayed! We could have talked about this!”

“I tried!” Myriam countered angrily. “You didn’t listen, so I left. But I’d never abandon you. You knew where I was the entire time. If only you’d have used your brain,” she smiled kindly at him. “I love you, Klaus, but I don’t like it that you make lifelong decisions, like taking care of a child, all by yourself. We’re a team. You and I.”

“Are you staying?”

“Unless you do something stupid again or ask me to do something for you? Yes,” she said simply. “Because you’re an idiot. But you’re mine. My idiot. I will always come back to you.”

“I’ve been lonely without you,” he said as he closed the space between them and put his arms around her. “Without you… I felt lost.”

“Were you faithful like I was?”

“Of course! What kind of question is that?”

She kissed him then and pulled him onto the bench to sit with her. She handed him a glass of bourbon and pulled him into her arms. “Tell me what you’ve been doing then.”

“What? You didn’t leave one of your minions behind when you left?”

“Yes, with the clear instructions to make sure you stayed safe, not to report back to me,” Myriam huffed. “Unless you want me to ask him, I mean, that’s fine.”

“No,” he replied with a sigh. “Elijah took a shine to Marcel about a year into us having him.”

“Oh, I don’t think that went well…”

“Elijah was doing a better job at tutoring young Marcel than I was. So, I undaggered Kol. Now, let me tell you, he was not happy, but he understood why you wanted to dagger him, and I’m sure that he’ll eventually apologise to you in person.”

“How long did it take for you to dagger him again?”

Klaus took a sip of his bourbon and hung his head. “A couple of days later. I wanted to make him feel better after he got out of the box, so we slaughtered a tenement building, we had quite the fun. But he crossed the line when he staged a Shakespeare play for Marcellus with compelled humans. Slaughtered them in front of him and even fed the boy his blood!”

“I can’t believe I missed that! That would have been epic!” Myriam barked out a laugh. “He was jealous, just like you were!”

He shrugged then. “Kol’s more agreeable with you around. I decided to provoke the witches, too. You know, for them to cover up my indiscretions. The townsfolk drowned Celeste Dubois, Elijah’s lover, in a bathtub for punishment.”

She ran a hand through his hair and smiled at him. “I love your brilliant mind.”

“And a decade and a half ago I daggered Rebekah. She had once again fallen for the wrong man; Marcel. I gave him a choice; I’d keep Rebekah daggered and turn him, or, I’d undagger her and have him live out his natural human life. I only did so when his own father shot him in the chest when Marcel was freeing a slave.”

Myriam pursed her lips then. She had smelled the absence of Rebekah in the home, and now she knew why. “Good, now I can fuck around with him.” At least it seemed like the boy had a good heart, but still, she knew she would never like him.

“You will do nothing of the sort!”

She huffed. “You can’t stop me, he’s the reason I went away!”

He enjoyed being in her arms for a long, silent moment between the two of them. “What have you been up to then, love?”

“I remodelled some buildings,” she shrugged. “And I went to your house in Cadiz, but it got burned down. My mom’s painting was still in there, wasn’t it?”

He slowly nodded as he eyed her. “That’s all you did over there?”

“And poked some remaining Medici’s. Had one work for me for a while, but then a little birdie told me that I should come back to America to have fun with the vampire Kol and I encountered in Florence the first time round.”

“You’re going to leave me again?!”

“No,” she smiled at him and tenderly kissed him. “I’ve sent some demons over to keep an eye on the vampire. I’m staying. I told you. I’m staying.”

Klaus sighed then. “I had anticipated a fight upon your return.”

“Are you disappointed?”

“Perhaps a little,” he admitted with a smile on his face.

“Because of the good sex that usually follows after?” She asked suggestively. They had their fallouts over the years, but the makeup sex was always worth it. Myriam merely felt that she shouldn’t feel angry anymore about something that had happened three decades ago. “I’d never turn down good sex, mon Loulou.”

He gently took her hand. “Then please join me in our bedroom in our new home in the Quarter. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

~o.O.o~

1863

They had only arrived back in New Orleans after their five year trip across the sea to Europe because she had insisted he’d leave the city, and she wanted to show him the properties that were still in her name. She figured he was going to need them one day, mainly because they hadn’t heard from Mikael in a very long time.

Mikael’s presence was long overdue, and even Klaus was getting a little paranoid. And thus, during their five years away, they had come up with a battle plan in case things would go wrong. Just her and Klaus. Find safe places to hide, to disappear. Myriam would act as his liaison, his gatekeeper, sort to speak, should Mikael make the family scatter.

However, part of that plan was for Myriam to adopt a new last name as her own was ancient, and it’d still raise eyebrows. Myriam had to become ordinary. Klaus came up with the last name of Jenkins, and a new middle name as Hope. Because hope was what she was to him, amongst many other things. Myriam Hope Jenkins.

They compelled a random woman in Austria to sign over Myriam’s properties over to her and invite them both into all of them. Then, they had the woman go to a lawyer and set up a will for all the properties to be put back in Myriam’s name once the woman died. And then they made her forget.

But for now, she was still Myriam d’Medici, they were still safe. For how long they didn’t know.

She rolled into Klaus with a sigh and gently kissed his chest to wake him up from his slumber. One of her demons had alerted her to a potential problem brewing in the village where Klaus, Kol, Rebekah, and Elijah were born, and she knew that he didn’t want to return there just yet. It wasn’t the right time.

And the right time would be when there was another doppelganger so he could finally break his curse and become the person who he always was, underneath. It could take a very long time, and fortunately, he had grown patient. But the potential problem was going to be a problem in the long run or could be one in the long run, and she needed to make sure nothing irreversible would happen. “Mon LouLou,” she whispered as she kissed him along his jawline. “I fear for your village, the newly founded town of Mystic Falls. Do I have your permission to go and have a look?”

“Why?” Klaus groaned as he rubbed his eyes and turned a little to look at her. “I want you by my side, Myriam.”

“And I always will be, but we’ve also talked about more protection for you and the family, and I feel that I need to go and have a look. I’ll come home every few weeks, I promise.”

“But we’ve just gotten back to New Orleans, must you really leave this soon?”

“Just to make sure they won’t ruin your future playground.”

“And what is going on then?”

She shrugged. “It seems like a few vampires are living there and a Bennett witch, they might cause trouble,” she then let out a long, exasperated sigh. “And my demon informed me that the Bennett witch is a friend of Katerina Petrova.”

“How dare you say that name in our bed!” Angry, Klaus sat up and looked at her. “You killed the mood!”

“I’m merely being honest!” Myriam defended herself. “That bitch is a manipulative one, I don’t want her to ruin your playground for you! The village you come from! I’ve never been, and I’m asking your permission instead of leaving without telling you!”

“You’d still leave if I refuse.”

“Yes,” she huffed as she sat up and looked at him. “Because Mystic Falls is close to New Orleans and she might be scheming to hurt you or our family!”

He looked at her and knew that she wasn’t going to let up. She was stubborn like that. But as an original vampire, and her sire, he could tell her to stay. Command her to stay with him. “Listen closely, Myriam. You’re not leaving my side. I want you with me. Have I made myself clear?”

“Asshole,” she pushed him away and got out of bed. “I would have thought that maybe Elijah would try to compel me to get away from you, to convince me that you’re the worst and that I should run. But you! You tried to compel me!” She started to get dressed, anger coursing through her veins. “You betrayed my trust!”

“Why didn’t it work?”

“And you’re not even denying it!”

Klaus got off the bed and pushed her against the nearest wall. “Tell me!” he demanded.

“I’ve been ingesting vervain for the last four decades!” Myriam slapped his cheek. “Because I’d like to keep my own mind, thank you very much!”

“You don’t trust me!”

“I do! I don’t trust your brother!” she yelled at him. “Now, let me go! I promise I’ll come back in a few weeks, but I need to do this to make sure you’re safe!”

“You don’t trust me!” he let go of her, got dressed and stormed out, followed by a lot of crashing and breaking of things.

She followed him out and stopped him before kissing him, hard. “I love you, Niklaus Mikaelson. I trust you with everything inside of me, but I don’t trust your brother. That’s why I’ve been ingesting vervain. Not because of you, but because of your brother. And it hurts that you broke that trust by doing the exact thing that I feared from your brother. You have no reason to act like this. I’m not an Original. I need to protect myself somehow. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

“Aside from running away!”

“I’m not running away! I’m going to take care of things, and I will be back!” she shot at him. “I will come back!”

“Will you leave some of your pets behind? For me?”

She blinked at him then. “Are you sure?”

“Thanks to that one you left with me before we arrived here in New Orleans, I knew where to find you. If you hadn’t, you would have bled out. I want you to leave one or two of them with me. So that they can keep an eye on me, and they can report back to you. Please.”

She smiled at him then as she took his hand and led him back to the bedroom. “I will.”

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