Chapter Text
The trees swallowed the sound of the house before Klaus was even out of sight of it. That was the thing about the woods behind their land, they didn't care what Mikael was shouting about, or who he was shouting it at. Klaus had learned that a long time ago, back when he was small enough that Elijah still had to duck the low branches carrying him.
He wasn't small anymore. He still ran to the same tree line.
"You could just apologize," Elijah said, catching up to him without any particular hurry, like he already knew where this was going and saw no reason to rush toward it. "It would take less time than this."
"I could." Klaus kept walking. "I won't."
Behind them, Kol made a noise that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh. "Can we not do this today. I was promised nothing more strenuous than eating an apple."
"Nobody promised you anything," Elijah said.
"Rebekah promised me an apple."
"Then go find Rebekah."
"I'd rather watch this." Kol caught up on Klaus's other side, hands behind his head, entirely too pleased with himself for someone who'd been dragged out here against his will. "Go on, brother, tell us what you did this time."
"I didn't do anything."
"You never do anything. And yet."
Klaus didn't answer that. He could still hear it, if he let himself, Mikael's voice pitched low and flat in the way that was worse than shouting, the kind of quiet that meant he'd already decided something and was only waiting for a reason to act on it. Klaus hadn't waited to hear what the reason would be.
"He'll want you back before supper," Elijah said. Still even. Still reasonable, the way he always was, like reason had ever once worked on their father. "It's easier if you're the one who goes to him first."
"Easier for who."
Elijah didn't have an answer for that either, or didn't give one, and they walked in silence for a while after that, the ground turning soft and damp where the trees thinned toward the meadow. Kol kicked at a root. Somewhere off to the left a bird startled out of the brush, and none of them flinched at it, too used to the woods to be surprised by anything smaller than a wolf.
The meadow opened up ahead of them, gone gold and white with the season, and Klaus stopped at the edge of it without deciding to.
"Oh, for God's sake," Kol said. "You're not going to sulk in a field of weeds."
"They're not weeds."
"They're absolutely weeds."
Elijah looked at him for a long moment, the kind of look that used to mean he was deciding whether to push, and then he didn't push. "Take your hour," he said. "But I'm not lying for you if he asks where you've been."
"I wouldn't ask you to."
Elijah turned and started back the way they'd come. Kol lingered a moment longer, long enough to pluck one of the dandelions at the meadow's edge and turn it in his fingers, unimpressed.
"You could at least pick a better spot to hide," he said. "This one's practically in shouting distance." He tossed the flower at Klaus's chest, seedhead already half gone, and went after Elijah without waiting to see if it landed.
Klaus caught it before it hit the ground. He stood there a moment after they'd gone, alone at the edge of the field, turning the stem between two fingers, and then, because there was no one left to see him do it and because it was easier than thinking about the house behind him, he brought it to his mouth and blew.
He didn't say the wish aloud. He wasn't even sure it counted as a wish, more a thought that rose up before he could stop it, something that had been sitting under his ribs for longer than he wanted to admit. Let someone look at me and not see a burden. Let someone want me there. He felt foolish the second it passed through him, a grown man breathing on a weed like a child, and he almost laughed at himself for it.
The seeds went up in a loose scatter, caught by a wind that hadn't been blowing a moment before, and for a second he watched them turn silver against the grey of the sky before he looked away, back toward the treeline where his brothers had already disappeared. He didn't see where the seeds landed. He didn't think to.
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He started after Elijah and Kol at an easy pace, in no hurry to reach whatever waited for him at the house, and he'd gone maybe twenty steps when he heard it. Footsteps behind him, soft in the grass, not heavy enough to be Kol doubling back to torment him further.
Mikael.
The thought was there before he could stop it, and his body reacted faster than his mind did, blade out of its sheath and his weight already turning to meet whatever came at him from behind. He'd had enough of his father's temper to know better than to leave his back open to it, not out here, not with no one else around to see what might happen.
There was no one to swing at.
A woman stood a few feet off, hands loose at her sides, entirely unbothered by the sword pointed at her chest. She had pale hair coming loose from something that might once have been a proper style, and a dress the color of milk that didn't belong to any house he recognized, and dandelion fluff caught in the strands over her ear like she'd walked straight out of the field rather than into it.
"Hello," she said, and smiled at him like he hadn't just drawn a blade on her. "That's a strange thing to greet someone with."
He didn't lower it. "Who are you. And where did you come from. There's nothing back that way but field, I'd have seen you."
"Would you?" She glanced past him toward the meadow, unbothered, like the question was more interesting than the sword. "I'm not sure I can answer either of those the way you want me to."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." She looked down at herself then, at the dress, at her own hands, turning one over like she was checking it belonged to her. "I don't know my name. I don't know where I was before this. I only know I'm here, and that you're the first thing I've seen."
Klaus's grip didn't ease. "That's not possible."
"No," she agreed, easy as anything, like she'd already had the same thought and set it aside. "But here I am."