𝓐rsonist.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES & THE ORIGINALS ⁕  2010

KLAUS MIKAELSON has a problem and that problem is love.

But it's not his, it's his brother's.

When Kol Mikaelson falls for a woman in 1821, Klaus is faced with a conundrum with an easy fix: subject his brother to a dagger that will immobilise him until removed––

And of course, kill the girl too.

But, so it seems, things are easier said than done.

LILA, meanwhile, knows exactly who she is.

(And that's her first lie.)

(Not that she'd know it.)

She knows that she's a nightmare dreamt up by a man on a back street in New Orleans. She knows that she was thought of a long time ago and has lived this life ever since. She knows she's a specific kind of beautiful: handpicked and tried on for size, bathed in blood long before her teeth had elongated and sharpened into knives.

(But she doesn't know that she was loved and then she was lost.)

Lila knows that, over the past two hundred years, she's become cold. She knows that she's become cruel. She knows that she was taught to be this way somehow, and although, maybe the specifics are blurry, she knows that that man made her this way.

She knows that he taught her in the tradition of everything: filth teaches filth.

(But she doesn't know that everything had gone wrong. It wasn't supposed to go this way.)

Lila knows that the man that pressed kisses against her throat and then drained her dry, had claimed to love her. She knows that she spent a hundred years under his hand, growing in his image and trying to live off of his affection alone––

And she knows that it rotted her, from the inside out, like a deadly fever she couldn't get sweat out.

(But she doesn't know that she was loved once, loved dearly and wholly, and then stolen like flowers from a grave, repurposed on someone else's window and all.)

Now, Lila figures she has a choice.

(No. She's never had a choice. Not once.)

She can continue her life as it has been for the last century, ever since she'd said to hell with toxic love, or she can get revenge. But for a woman like Lila... She knows that's not a choice at all––

She says yes to an alliance with Katherine Pierce faster than she'd left the one man who had had understood her.

(False.)

And, as she sets out to ruin the man that had ruined her first, she can't help but wonder what is that made her so rotten–– after all, at one point, she must've been soft, right? She must've been weak to love him just as he'd claimed to love her?

After all, why else would she be filled with all this rage?

(Wrong. It's all wrong.)

But if Lila knows anything about the man she loved, she knows that he'll be an impossible feat to take down.

It'll take more than just ripping a heart out a chest and sinking graves that were better left unturned.

Because she knows her lovers name just as she knows his ability to survive––

(No. Please, god No––)

Klaus Mikaelson.

(No.)

(No...)

(...)

(The man that loves you, the man who would've killed for you..)

(His name wasn't Klaus.)

(It was Kol.)

aka,
⁕ ╱ IN WHICH,
A woman takes the revenge she deserves and a man compels himself a love he doesn't.

LILA: You'd kill for me, baby?

KLAUS: Of course.

LILA: But would you die for me?

KLAUS: (He visibly pauses.)

LILA: (She smiles.) You should probably say yes.

anya taylor-joy ... LILA
Unknown Age. Unknown Birthday. ╱ The Ex-Girlfriend.

⁕

alongside the original the vampire diaries cast
aside from ...

freddy carter · KOL MIKAELSON

graphic by nightwvngs

& pedro pascal · ALARIC SALTZMAN

I have sharp teeth inside my mouth, inside my dark red lips, and lacquer hides the claws in my red fingertips. So I conceal my armoury. Yours is all on view. You think you are possessing me -- But I've got my teeth in you.
Angela Carter, Unicorn.

AUTHORS NOTE. ⁕ WARNING! This book contains: dark themes such as murder, trauma, major and minor character death, sex, gore and mutilation. There will be discussion around sexual exploitation, mental health and grief.

⁕ I do not own the vampire diaries and respective plots and characters are owned by CW and the respective creatives behind The Vampire Diaries/The Originals and production team. This fic is inspired by Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu. The red hair and the bangs did it for me. I'm no better than a man. Pretty woman get covered in blood and brain go brrr.

© FOXGIOVES ╱ FEB 2023