Chapter 05
Mystic Falls, February 12th, 2015
It had been nearly two years since she saved Damon from desiccating himself because he didn’t want to live without Elena. Nearly two years since she and Kol got married after a thousand years. Life was pretty good, her trees were doing well. Especially Ezekiel, who she planted in New Orleans. The soil had done him some good and, according to all the other trees, he had started to repair himself again and grow.
She and Kol hadn’t been back to New Orleans since their wedding for various reasons. One of them being Damon. Despite having Kol have compelled the desire to desiccate himself out of Damon, he was still depressed. Sure, Isa kept him busy by telling him what to do in Mystic Falls to help rebuild the city after they finally got rid of Julian and killed the remaining opposing heretics. Valerie, who had been an ally, had taken off and nobody had heard from her since.
They’d been able to stay hidden from the mess that Stefan and Damon had originated by pulling Damon’s mother out of the prison world because her cabin was a secret and well protected from magic. If you didn’t know about it, you were not going to find it. It’s what kept her safe all these years. The witch Ayana had always been good to her once she found her.
And yes, she had said that she wouldn’t meddle in the mess that they had created, but when Stefan decided to take his chances and leave, leaving Damon on his own, she couldn’t help but to feel sorry for him and take him in.
Damon rehab. And he’d been nothing but a petulant child. Isa didn’t like Elena, it was good that she had a time-out, but for the sake of shutting up Damon, she’d liked to hunt down Bonnie Bennett and rip her heart out so that Elena could live again. And then Isa would tell him how bad Elena is for him.
While the thought was nice and all, she knew that Damon liked Bonnie, too, and she didn’t want him to hate her. But her patience was growing thin. Kol’s patience had already worn out several times. During the first winter he was with them, he had dug a Damon-sized hole underneath Geezer the tree where he could stand, but not lay down, and had buried him neck deep because he had grown tired of him whining. Of course, Kol had compelled him to shut up and stay there until they’d be able to come and get him again.
They had left Damon there for a couple of days while they had the cabin all to themselves, having sex as much as possible and generally enjoy each other’s company.
It wasn’t fair towards Kol that he had to suffer through Damon’s presence. Maybe it had been a bad idea on Isa’s behalf; she was so used to taking care of the Salvatores that maybe it was time to let them go. She had already made the first step by not interfering when Damon brought his mother back, and maybe, if he wanted to desiccate, he had to be allowed to. It was just frustrating that that thought made him weak. Un-Damony.
But Isa had gone through a long period of not being herself as well, several, actually, and she had grown only stronger from it, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to let Damon go; let him do whatever he wanted and she’d see when he’d pop up again.
Amy and Geezer were telling her to let him go, and Kol – the tree, not her husband – told her that she was basically taking away the choice for Damon, the choice to do what he wanted, free will. And she wasn’t too happy about it, either. It was not what she had wanted, to be selfish. Selfish.
Even the word was rude. The Mikaelsons were selfish, and even though she was now a Mikaelson through marriage, it wasn’t one of her traits. Or it shouldn’t have been.
Just because ‘her boys’ wanted to flee and stick their heads in the sand didn’t mean that she had to do everything to control them. She let Stefan go, so why couldn’t she allow Damon to do the same?
Who was she to decide that keeping Damon from starving himself so that time would pass faster was a bad thing for him? She wasn’t his mother. She’d looked out for him all these years, but did it really give her the right to keep him from doing that to himself? No, it didn’t.
It didn’t.
She’d been acting selfishly over the last two years, and that wasn’t right. It wasn’t nice, and she realized she had a lot to make up for towards her husband.
Isa had cooked them a meal over the open fire and they were sharing it inside the cabin. It was nice and cozy and because it was Valentine’s day, Kol had brought her a bundle of flowers and there was a cow strapped to the cabin on the outside. Meat for days and blood for one. Or two, if she decided to share, but Kol didn’t like animal blood much.
After dinner, Isa put her arms around Damon and hugged him tightly. “I have a present for you,” she said as she smiled up to him.
“And not even for me?” Kol huffed.
She looked at her husband and smiled widely. “And it’s also a present for you, husband. I want you to release Damon from your compulsion and give him his free will back.”
“Are you sure, Darling?” Kol smiled widely. He was more than happy to see Damon Salvatore go. He had come so close to killing him permanently over the last two years and always refrained because his wife had taken a liking to him. Damon was her family, and Kol still had difficulties accepting that.
“Yep,” she said as she looked up to the vampire she was hugging. “I am so sorry that I took away your free will. If you want to starve yourself until Elena wakes up, then who am I to stop you? You’ve been making life difficult for me and Kol since I dragged you away and that’s unfair towards Kol. So, now you’ll be able to do whatever you want,” she smiled up to him before letting go and kissed her husband who was now standing behind her.
“Are you sure, darling?” Oh, why did he ask her that again? Of course she was sure. It was likely that she had thought about this long and hard before finally making this decision.
“We all learn from our mistakes,” she smiled up at him and placed her hand on her cheek. “I’ve made a few along the years, I’ve kept him from making big mistakes a few times and I learned that in some cases, taking away someone’s free will is a bad thing. If Damon wants to go through pain in order not to experience life without his beloved, then who am I to stop him? I’ve come close doing that several times.”
Kol loved every nutty little quirk of Isa’s. Granted, it had taken him a while to get used to the whole idea of her talking to trees, but he loved every bit of her. And he loved it even more when she made sense. Like now. He didn’t care much for Damon but had accepted his presence as Isa liked him, had cared for him like he had been her son in a way. And now she wanted to set him free.
However, he didn’t have the power to do so. Kol had never compelled Damon, he had told him that he was allowed to be a miserable cunt, but for Isa’s sake, he was not going to let himself desiccate. They both had read the stories in the cave below the cabin, multiple times, and she had learned that it simply wasn’t worth it. When Damon agreed to try, at least, Kol decided that was that.
It was very much unlike him. The only thing he and Damon had in common was Isa, Kol wouldn’t mind driving a stake through Damon’s heart simply because he could. And to fuck with Nik, to be honest, seeing as he was one of Nik’s vampires. However, for Isa, he’d do anything, even if it meant playing nice to the older Salvatore brother, give him some guidance or whatever.
Ugh.
He softly brushed his lips with hers and smiled at her. “I never compelled him, he’s just sticking around because he likes you.”
Isa’s head snapped around to look at Damon, eyes filled with fire. “And you’ve been behaving like an asshole this entire time!”
Kol blinked at that. Isa wasn’t known for using colorful words but after what the Cullens had did to her and now that she was hanging around with him and Damon all the time – socializing with others – she had picked up a thing here and there and it was hot.
“Because I am miserable,” Damon said with a shrug. “I can be miserable and still hang around the one person who actually cares about me. Stefan ran off. Everyone left Mystic Falls when the Heretics settled. Even BonBon left me. And then there was you,” he smiled at her. “You’ve always been there for me even when I didn’t know you were. The least I could do was to stick around because you cared enough to stop me.”
“Then stop making me worried about you!” she breezed as she pushed him across the cabin. “Stop making things hard on me and Kol! Everytime I try something to cheer you up, I’m met with a scowl!”
“Because what would cheer me up, wouldn’t cheer you up, Isa,” Damon smiled at her. “I want to go on a spree. Get drunk and kill everything in sight and Mystic Falls is pretty empty.”
“We could go to Los Angeles for a couple of weeks,” Kol smirked, suddenly liking Damon – a lot. Yes, he loved Isa and he was glad that she allowed them freedom with their own diet so they could still snack on human blood, but most blood came from the hospital or the occasional human. A full on blood fest would be amazing.
Both Kol and Damon had the same hopeful look on their faces. Now that she was in the ‘yay free will’ mood, she sighed and nodded. “Very well, we’ll go to Los Angeles so you two can have your fun and on our way back, we’ll drop in on your brother in New Orleans. I want to see Ezekiel.” She then grabbed Kol and threw him against Damon. “And you two should have opened your mouth sooner!”
~o.O.o~
New Orleans, February 14th, 2016
So maybe they didn’t make it all the way to Los Angeles. Damon wanted to ride the wave of tourists of post-Mardi Gras, have a bigger snack.
She didn’t like crowds very much, nor the loud music that bars and clubs brought, but for her husband and her friend, she was going to muddle through it. Because she was hungry too. Unlike them though, she had found herself a quiet corner and pretended to enjoy watching people. Pretty soon someone would come and ask her to dance or have fun. Damon had made sure of that; buying her a dress that was ill-fitting, at least according to her.
Her boobs nearly fell out of the purple number, there was no support at all. Moving felt as if she was wading through mud as it was so tight, but when she had showed it to Kol, it was almost as if he was salivating. He couldn’t keep his hands off of her on their way to this particular establishment and if she had to be honest, she kinda liked it.
It had been too long since the three of them had fun. Then again, if Damon had communicated his feelings properly before, if she had realized that she was being selfish quicker and if they both had admitted that he wasn’t compelled and shit, Isa would have stepped in earlier.
But playing the ‘if’ game didn’t make her feel any better. It didn’t help anyone or made the past better and all she could do is live in the present. And hope that Damon would snap out of his misery soon. And her boys needed to communicate better. And she wanted – no, needed – more alone time with her husband. Now that she knew that Damon was going to stick around for a while longer, she was definitely going to get some.
She didn’t like the way the girl was looking at her husband. So smitten. Isa could smell her arousal over every other scent that was in the club. A want, a need, for Kol. Granted, it was part of the whole game, seduce someone, compel that person not to scream, pretend to go in for a kiss and snack instead, but maybe he was taking it a little bit too far. She wasn’t even that pretty, quite insulting, if she had to say so herself.
Isa quickly glanced over to Damon, who was doing shots off of a very cute young lady and knew that she could leave him unsupervised for a bit as she hopped off her small perch and made her way over to Kol and the blonde Barbie with legs for days and breasts the size of melons. Probably fake. She circled around them as she weaved through the partying crowd, her eyes firmly fixed on Kol and smirked when he finally caught her eye.
Kol swallowed hard as he spotted his beloved Isa playing her game. Sure, it was great to see that he hadn’t lost the ability to flirt before taking a sip after Isa’s influence, but Isa worked differently. She observed every kill as if she was a wildling. In essence, she was. She was a wildling who retained enough memory of being human to be civil, normal, but she had the instincts of the animals she hunted.
And while he had seen her hunt animals more often than not, he hadn’t actually seen it happen on a human just yet. She was more than happy to take a sip of one of his victims or drink blood from a blood bag when she was in the mood for human. In essence, she didn’t like drinking from humans because she loved them to bits. Unless something would happen that would cause her to go into her ‘fight or flight mode’. The church massacre had been glorious when she found out that he was still alive. When he found out that she was still around.
But it was then when he realized that she wasn’t hunting the human, she was after him. “Hello lovely,” Isa said as she put her hand on the girl’s shoulder to get her attention. “What’s your name?”
“D-debi,” she stammered. “I’m sorry if I flirted with your man but he came on to me.”
“Oh, I know,” Isa purred as she gently pushed Debi’s long hair away from her neck and looked at her husband, her eyes darkened with hunger and lust. “You are pretty. Are your breasts fake?”
“W-what?” Debi snapped her head around to look at Isa. She looked offended and confused at the same time. “What kind of question is that?”
“Are they fake? Your breasts?” she smirked and shrugged. “Simple question.”
“Isa, you’re being rude,” Kol said playfully as he pushed Debi’s hair back on the other side of her neck and took a step closer to the girl to wedge her between her and Isa. “My apologies, Debi,” he said as he cupped her chin to make her look at him. “She just wants what I want. Keep quiet.”
Isa giggled as Kol compelled the girl and bit her neck, keeping her eyes on Kol as she drank from the girl. She took a few sips and then released her. Licking her lips, she then bit her finger to close the holes she had made in the girl’s skin. “Delicious.”
Kol was less nice about it and nearly drained the girl from all of her blood. The girl was wobbling on her feet when he finally released her. “You’re drunk, go back to your hotel and sleep it off,” he said to the girl who then nodded and wobbled off.
Isa pulled him to the side of the club and pushed him against the wall as she pulled his head down for a kiss. “I don’t like you flirting with others even if it’s just for food,” she said with a low growl. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
Kol smirked at that. She was jealous or in a playful mood, wasn’t she? “Maybe I am. Sick and tired of being shacked up with Damon because of you.” He then winced. That didn’t sound playful at all.
Isa looked at him for a moment, her face set in anger and heartbreak.
“It was a joke.”
“It didn’t sound like one!” Yes, she knew that it wasn’t fair of her to have him live with Damon because she wanted to save him, but she had already realized that. She had apologized for it but apparently it was still a sore spot for Kol. Of course it was. “I already said I was sorry I subjected you to that! I was being selfish and I basically held him hostage!”
“Isa, I said it was a joke, calm down,” Kol said as he grabbed her and turned them around to push her against the wall, to make sure she would not do something stupid. “I love you. I accepted you wanting to take care of Damon and I know he took advantage out of you – the both of us – because you’re the only one who didn’t leave him. I don’t like him. I’ll never like him, but I tolerate him because of you.”
She narrowed her eyes on him as he stared her down, his hold on her tightening. “You should have said ‘no’.”
“And then what? Broke your heart?” He smiled at her. “I wouldn’t do anything to break your heart like that, Isa, not anymore. But you could be a little bit forgiving, I’ve behaved myself in the last few years. Damon sort of behaved himself and now we’re letting loose, you have nothing to be jealous about. You’re not being fair.”
“I am not jealous!” She pushed him away from her. “That girl wanted to have sex with you. I could smell it.”
“Yeah, you are jealous,” Kol grinned. “Why? Because you think she was pretty?”
“She was a fake! You can do better than that!” Isa huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Had she been really hot, I would have felt better about it, but your taste in humans sucks. Even I look prettier than that Debi, with her fake boobs and a hair color that seemed unnatural.”
He blinked at her. What?
“Her arousal towards you was insulting.” She pointed at Damon, who was still having fun with his pretty ladies and shrugged. “Had you done something like that, with pretty girls, it would have been fine. Debi was so ugly and fake that she deserved to be a snack.”
“You’re nuts.”
“I know,” Isa smirked as she took his hand and started to pull him along with her. Her eyes scanning the crowd, finding the perfect girl for Kol to fuck around with. She was beautiful, but she didn’t look as cheap as Debi had done. Her red hair was perfectly styled, her makeup was on point and she smelled nice. “That one,” she said as she pointed at the girl. “Have that one.”
“Isa…”
She softly kissed him and smiled as another thought came up in her head. She was certain that Kol would be up for it as they’d experimented before when they travelled the world a little. “And, if you manage to convince her that there’s a party for three in an abandoned shack in the Bayou, take her with you.”
“You’re saying…”
“I’m saying,” she nodded and kissed him again before putting her hand on his groin, already feeling his growing arousal. “It’s Valentine’s Day, why not gift you a threesome?”
He was salivating at the thought. “I love you.”
“One condition though;” she said playfully as she squeezed his cock through the fabric of his pants. “No compulsion, think you can do that?”
“Oh, come on, who can resist a face like this?” Kol huffed. “I have a handsome face.”
“That you do,” she kissed him again. “Happy hunting, see you soon.”
He watched her leave the club, heading towards the shack in the Bayou. His blood was already racing through his body, he wanted that threesome now, and he was so happy that she suggested it, and not him. He could also understand why her behaviour seemed all over the place since they got to New Orleans. She didn’t like crowds. Knowing that Damon was having fun had been one item on her list and now, she gifted Kol a threesome.
If the girl she had picked out was game for it too. It was Valentine’s Day and she looked single. Single women were always more desperate for a date at Valentine’s. Of course she was going to be up for this.
Well, it was a good thing that he had excellent persuasion skills. He took a deep breath and joined the girl and her group of friends. “Hello,” he greeted her with a smile on his face. “My name is Kol, can I buy you a drink?”
~o.O.o~
She took the time in the Bayou to center herself again, talk to the trees and catch up with Ezekiel. This was the last time she had accompanied Kol or Damon into a club because it screwed with her mind. She lost herself, and that wasn’t fun. It made her angry that she was so sensitive to impulses like that.
But it was a part of her and sometimes it went well, and other days, like these, it just messed with her. Luckily, they were in New Orleans. Familiar ground. Familiar trees. Had it been in Los Angeles, she might have snapped and killed a few humans.
Sipping from the bottle of bourbon left at the shack by Niklaus, she waited patiently for Kol to return with their date. She couldn’t wait, this was going to be so much fun.
After a while, she saw Kol appear with the girl in tow, she looked positively under the influence of a little bit of alcohol and she was all giggly. Isa hoped that she still knew what she was doing, though. It wouldn’t be fun without an actively participating third partner.
“Isa, may I introduce Mariska to you?”
“Hi!” Isa smiled widely as she got to her feet to shake Mariska’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“And she’s definitely on board.”
“Well then,” Isa looped her arm through Mariska’s and directed her to the door. “Welcome, welcome! And happy Valentine’s Day!”
Kol sighed happily as he closed the door behind him. This was going to be fun. “Happy Valentine’s Day indeed.”
*the end*