The Boy King's Journey in TVD/TO As A Mikaelson

A week had passed since the ritual, and Castle de Martel existed in a state of carefully maintained fiction. Through Vali's compulsion, the Count believed his children had been lost in a tragic riding accident, their bodies swept away by the river's cruel currents.

Klaus hadn't left Tatia's chambers where the de Martel siblings' bodies lay, maintaining his vigil despite his siblings' attempts to draw him away. The confrontation with Vali had left him subdued, his rage giving way to hollow grief.

But something was changing.

The mark on Vali's arm pulsed steadily as he stood in the doorway, watching. The vampire blood in their veins still called to their souls, refusing to let them truly pass on. Yet they remained trapped, bound by the ritual's power until he had intervened.

Aurora's body suddenly arched upward, a desperate gasp tearing from her lips. Beside her, Tristan's eyes snapped open, his own resurrection following moments after his sister's. Their eyes held a new depth, an ancient knowledge that hadn't been there before - the weight of having seen beyond the veil.

Klaus moved with supernatural speed, gathering Aurora into his arms as she struggled to breathe. His joy at her return evident in every gesture, every touch, as if afraid she might disappear again.

"You knew," Tatia observed softly, standing beside her husband. "That's why you wouldn't let them burn the bodies. You were waiting until you could reach them."

Aurora's eyes found Vali, and there was something different in her gaze now - a profound reverence mixed with understanding. She saw him not as just Klaus's brother anymore, but as something far more ancient and terrible, something that chose to walk among them in human form.

"We saw you," she whispered, her voice filled with wonder. Her hand reached out toward him before dropping, as if remembering that the being before her only wore the shape of a man. "Truly saw you."

Tristan sat up slowly, his movements careful as if relearning how to exist in physical form. His scholar's mind struggled to process what they'd witnessed, yet his eyes held the same reverence as his sister's when they fell upon Vali.

"The vampire blood called to us," he explained, his voice soft with awe. "Like an anchor to this world, but we couldn't return. The ritual's power held us bound until..." he paused, searching for words adequate to describe what had happened.

"Until you came for us," Aurora finished. "Until you revealed yourself in your true glory."

Klaus looked between them, confusion evident on his face. "What do you mean? What did you see?"

Vali's expression darkened. "That's not something that needs to be discussed."

"Why?" Tristan asked, his voice gentler than his usual scholarly precision would allow. "Because you fear we'll react as she did? Like your mother when she first saw what you truly were?"

The mark flared crimson as the temperature in the room plummeted. Vali's black eyes fixed on Tristan with dangerous intent, but Aurora spoke before he could respond.

"We saw everything in the Other Side," she explained, her voice thick with emotion. "Including echoes of the past. A mother looking upon her newborn son and seeing not a child, but something that terrified her." She paused, her eyes meeting Vali's without flinching. "But we're not her. What we witnessed... yes, it was beyond mortal comprehension, but it was magnificent."

"Aurora," Vali's voice carried a warning, but she continued, compelled by the need to speak truth.

"A dragon of living darkness," she described reverently. "Each of your thousand eyes held universes within them. Your wings..." she shuddered, but not in fear, "they tore holes in reality itself. The Mark at your center wasn't just a brand but a wound in existence, bleeding power into the void."

Klaus stared between them, his expression shifting from confusion to dawning understanding. "Brother?"

"They need to know," Tatia said softly, her hand finding Vali's. "They've seen your true form. Let them speak it. Let them show you that not everyone will turn away in fear."

The mark pulsed steadily as Vali remained silent, his eyes watching the de Martel siblings with an unreadable expression. The weight of millennia seemed to press down on the chamber as they waited for his response.

"You saved us," Tristan said into the silence, his voice carrying the weight of witness. "When those witches tried to bind us, to use us against your family, you revealed yourself. You didn't just destroy them - you erased them from existence itself."

"And now you fear we'll look at you as she did," Aurora added with gentle understanding. "With horror instead of acceptance. But we're not her, Vali. What we saw was power beyond comprehension, yes, but it was power wielded in protection, not malice."

She reached for Klaus's hand, drawing strength from his presence. "We saw what lies beneath your mask, and we choose not to turn away. Perhaps..." she hesitated, then continued, "perhaps that's why you allowed us to remember. Because some part of you needed to know if anyone could see you truly and still choose to stay."

The mark's pulsing slowed, its crimson light softening as something shifted in Vali's expression. For the first time since his mother had looked upon him with fear, someone had witnessed his true nature and chosen to embrace rather than flee from it.

Vali's expression hardened, the brief vulnerability vanishing beneath a mask of cold indifference. The mark pulsed sharply as he stepped away from Tatia's touch.

"You delude yourselves," he said, his voice carrying an edge that made the air itself seem to recoil. "Your understanding? Your reverence? Your acceptance?" His laugh was hollow, devoid of warmth. "You glimpsed something for mere moments and presume to comprehend its nature."

The temperature in the room dropped further as his black eyes swept over them. "You think I desire your understanding? That I seek acceptance for what I am?" Dark veins spread across his face as he smiled, the expression carrying nothing but contempt.

"That I allowed you to remember in seeking of your comfort? Don't kid yourselves. Love is worthless. The thought of needing someone else to fulfill me has never crossed my mind. Enough with your arrogance. Your attempts to humanize what you witnessed are nothing but self-comfort."

Aurora's expression fell, while Tristan's scholarly certainty wavered. Even Klaus seemed to draw back instinctively at the darkness in his brother's voice.

"Keep your revelations to yourselves," Vali commanded, his voice carrying just enough of that terrible power they'd witnessed to make them shudder. "Speak of what you don't understand again, and I'll show you exactly why mother's fear was justified."

He turned sharply, pausing only briefly at the doorway. "You saw what I allowed you to see. Nothing more. Remember that before you presume to know anything about what I am."

The mark pulsed one final time as he left, leaving behind a silence heavy with rejected understanding and the bitter taste of offered comfort spurned.

The silence lingered after Vali's departure, heavy with unspoken words and rejected truths. Aurora watched Tatia carefully, noting how the other woman's hand had dropped slowly to her side after Vali's rejection of her touch.

Something even in the past, before these days, saw happen many times, when she dropped her mask of cruelty that she wore in his presence and let gentleness seep out.

"Doesn't it hurt?" Aurora asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper. "The way he denies needing anyone - even you?"

Tatia's smile was gentle, though tinged with something deeper than sadness. "Sometimes," she admitted, moving to sit beside Aurora. "Sometimes it hurts more than I can bear."

"Then why..." Aurora hesitated, but Tatia understood the unspoken question. 

"Because I love him," she said simply. "I love him, and I wait for the day he truly opens himself to me." Her eyes grew distant, remembering. "What first drew me to him was his darkness - that undeniable power that made others flee. But what kept me..." she paused, her smile growing warmer, "what kept me was his light."

"His light?" Klaus asked, speaking for the first time since Vali's departure. "What light could exist in such darkness?"

He loved his brother, but even he sometimes began to doubt whether it was worth it to love someone so deeply when they only reciprocated it with apparent apathy, coldness, and denial. 

"The kind that even the evils of all creation could not truly extinguish," Tatia replied. "It's there, beneath the mark, beneath the power. A light that shows in how fiercely he protects what's his, in how deeply he loves despite his denials."

She turned to Aurora and Tristan. "You saw his true form, yes. But even that wasn't all of him. The dragon of darkness you witnessed? That's just one layer of what he is. Beneath it all, there's still my Vali - still your brother, Klaus. Still the man who would tear reality apart to protect his family."

The mark's lingering chill in the room seemed to soften at her words, as if even in his absence, some part of Vali acknowledged this truth.

---------------------------------

The stone corridors of Castle de Martel echoed with Vali's measured steps as he walked away from the chamber, the mark pulsing with barely contained emotion. Despite his dismissal of their words, memories he'd long buried began to surface...

A child of five winters, standing in the doorway of their home, watching as his mother cradled baby Niklaus. Her smile was radiant, full of love as she cooed at his younger brother. But when her eyes met his, that smile vanished, replaced by something cold and fearful.

"Mother," he'd said, holding up a wooden figure he'd carved himself. "I made this for you."

Esther had taken it with trembling fingers, her touch careful as if expecting the gift to bite. "Thank you, Vali," she'd whispered, but her eyes never left the mark on his arm.

The figurine had disappeared by nightfall. He'd later found its ashes in the hearth.

Another memory surfaced - he was seven, returning from a successful hunt with Father. His first kill, a deer he'd tracked himself. Pride had swelled in his chest as he'd run to show his mother.

"Look what I did!" he'd exclaimed, expecting finally to see that warm smile directed at him.

Instead, she'd backed away, muttering about the blood on his hands. "Just like the mark," she'd whispered. "Always blood with you."

He hadn't understood then that the mark had guided his hunt, had made him more efficient, more lethal than a child should be. He'd only understood the rejection in her eyes.

The mark pulsed harder as darker memories emerged. The "accidents" that began soon after - poisoned meals he somehow survived, falls that should have killed him, illnesses that seemed to target only him. Each time he recovered, he'd seen the fear in her eyes grow deeper.

Yet still he'd tried. Year after year, desperate attempt after desperate attempt to earn just a fraction of the love she showed his siblings. He'd bring her flowers - they'd wilt at her touch.

He'd try to help with her spells - the magic would twist wrong. He'd offer to assist with healing - and she'd send him away, claiming his presence tainted the remedies.

The worst memory came unbidden - he was twelve, had just saved Kol from drowning in the river. He'd fought the current, dragged his brother to shore, performed the compressions Father had taught him. When Kol coughed up water and breathed again, he'd finally, finally seen something like pride in his mother's eyes.

For one shining moment, he'd thought things would change.

That night, he'd overheard her in her workshop, speaking to spirits: "Even his kindness is cruel," she'd whispered. "He saves only to bind them closer, to make us love what should be destroyed. Like a demon wearing the face of mercy."

The mark flared crimson as Vali reached the castle battlements, the cool night air doing nothing to ease the burning in his chest.

He'd been a fool then, a child desperate for love from someone incapable of giving it. Each attempt at earning her affection had only convinced her more of his inherent evil.

"Your attempts to humanize what you witnessed are nothing but self-comfort," he'd told the de Martels. But standing alone under the stars, the mark pulsing with ancient power, he wondered who he'd really been trying to convince.

Behind him, Castle de Martel stood silent, holding secrets and memories both old and new. Somewhere within its walls, Tatia waited, offering an acceptance he didn't dare trust. The de Martels lived again, having seen his true nature and chosen not to turn away.

But the child who had once carved wooden figures for his mother's love was long dead. In his place stood something else - something that had learned that love was just another weapon to be used against you.

The mark pulsed once more, as if in agreement, as Vali stared out into the darkness that had become his only constant companion.

--------------------------------------

(Author note: Hello everyone! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

So, a deeper dive into Vali and why he is the way he is. Reincarnated or not, those scars remain. He truly loved Esther as a mother after all for over two decades, nearing on three.

Tell me what do you think about how Vali is? Does his cruelty make sense? Or is it forced as I sometimes have heard from some readers.

I'm trying to make it as realistic as I possibly can, so do please tell me if it actually works, cause I've been trying a lot.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter,

I'll see you all later,

Bye!)