EMOTIONLESS
the originals

(   SUMMARY: Excerpts of the time Henrik didn't have his emotions, set between his first resurrection when he was fourteen and his second resurrection when he stopped aging.   )

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     "Something is wrong with him," Rebekah declared late one evening, when the entire family was circled around the small fire. Save for Henrik, of course, who had finished his dinner and gone straight to bed. She only spoke because she could hear Henrik sleeping. The slow, deep breaths that meant someone was in a deep sleep, the slowed heartbeat. When her words got nothing but silence, she spoke again. "Do none of you see it? He's different. At first, I thought it was simply an...an adjustment period. We all went through it. We all came back to ourselves, somewhat. But he...hasn't."

"Perhaps he is simply sad, Bekah," Kol drawled lazily. He was sprawled closest to the fire, stripping a branch free of its bark for some unknown purpose. Perhaps he would start whacking his brothers with it soon. Out of everyone, he was fascinated with their healing abilities the most. Or perhaps he was fascinated with the concept of causing so much damage but never having to deal with the consequences. "It has been a very long month for all of us, and he has gone through more than we have. Give him time."

"Something is wrong," Rebekah repeated, though this time through clenched teeth. She leaned forward and jabbed a finger at Kol over the fire. "You know it just as well as I do, Kol. You just refuse to see it because it would make this entire situation worse. All of you have noticed. He doesn't stop to look at flowers anymore. Have any of you realized that?"

"He can sleep alone now too," Klaus commented quietly, sounding solemn. "He couldn't. Before. Now it seems to make no difference."

"He's not afraid of the dark anymore either," Finn added. It was something none of them had really realized until then, simply because the dark wasn't actually dark for them anymore. But of course, Henrik wasn't like them. He never would be, if Rebekah had a say in it.

"Give him time," Elijah ordered, sounding more stern than usual. They all collapsed into silence at his words. Rebekah, fuming, glared hard at the fire. "We must allow him time to adjust. He came back from the dead, and while we did also, it was entirely different. We were only dead for moments. He was dead for weeks. We cannot even begin to understand what he is dealing with."

"I could help," Kol muttered bitterly, "if you hadn't burned the spell Mother used to bring him back."

There was a beat of tense silence.

"Give him time," was all Elijah said, and while he had never shared what Henrik's resurrection spell had entailed, Rebekah knew deep in her soul that something horrible had happened to her baby brother. She just had to make sure it would not ruin him like it ruined her.

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The next few days were uneventful. They decided to stay where they were for the time being. There was a freshwater stream nearby, plenty of deer to hunt, and a road where carriages passed daily was a few miles away. They could hunt for blood away from Henrik, and then bring back water and whatever food they had found in the carriages. Elijah and Finn burned the bodies on pyres—though that was quickly becoming tedious, and Kol had suggested just burying them instead—and then, if it wasn't too late, they'd try to hunt for deer or rabbit for Henrik to eat. They often forgot Henrik had to eat human food, and whenever they came back empty-handed, he didn't bother hiding how annoyed he was.

That was the only time Henrik seemed even a little bit himself lately. When he was hungry. But even then, his annoyance always seemed...detached. Not personal, but simply inconvenient. There was a lack of emotion in him, a lack of feeling. Rebekah noticed it that first week he was back. At first, when he had come back, he'd been almost deathly silent and unreactive, but they had all brushed it off as shock and grief. But then he stayed that way. He was more talkative now, when he wanted to be, but his reactions weren't the same. It took a while for Rebekah to come to the conclusion that her baby brother's emotions seemed like they were completely gone.

Sometimes, she thought she was wrong. Sometimes she'd catch Henrik watching Kol and Klaus play-fight with wide, adoring eyes, the same idolizing look he used to give them before. Sometimes she caught him looking bothered when they came back with blood around their mouths. But with every flicker of a single genuine reaction, there were dozens of instances where he didn't react at all. Like when they had finally sat him down and told him Tatia was dead. They'd been as close as people with their age gap could be, and Henrik had been thrilled to learn that Elijah and Tatia were to be married. He'd excitedly called her sister upon the news. But when he heard she was dead, he had only...blinked. Like the announcement was only mildly interesting.

She wasn't giving up, though. Her brother was in there somewhere. She just had to reach him.

"You know what I realized?" Rebekah asked, sinking down on the grass to sit by her brother. Henrik was bent over their mother's grimoire. That was the only thing he did nowadays. Study spells and practice his magic. It was the only thing he could do, really. He didn't look up from the book at Rebekah's words, but she kept talking regardless. She has found that Henrik was very good at listening when everyone thought he wasn't. He'd been that way when they were human. Now it seemed like an enhanced skill. "We never acknowledged your name day. You've seen fifteen summers. I think that's cause for celebration, don't you?" Henrik didn't respond, not that she expected him to. They didn't normally celebrate anyone's name day, just kept track for everyone's ages, but Rebekah thought starting new family traditions was a good way to go. Their family needed to be stronger now more than ever, and they weren't strong if they weren't united.

And they would never be united without Henrik. He was their heart. He was the one thing they all had in common.

"I was thinking we could all have dinner together, as a family," Rebekah continued cheerfully. "I've been having to relearn how to cook because my tastes have changed, and Elijah has even been helping as well, but I'll need your help to get the flavors right. I was thinking deer stew with carrots, and cabbage soup with flatbread. I would offer buttermilk, but..." Henrik raised his head. That meal used to be Henrik's favorite, and Rebekah had never quite mastered it the way Esther had. But she was going to try.

But Henrik simply responded with, "I'm not hungry right now," and Rebekah was back to square one.

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Kol knew there was something wrong with Henrik. He had always known, from the second he had learned their mother had brought him back. Death had a way of changing people, and Henrik wasn't any different. He wasn't supposed to be alive, and his lack of emotions was clearly some sort of consequence. Kol knew that, but he never spoke it out loud. He never admitted to Rebekah that he agreed with her. He just continued on as normal and tried to adjust to the way their brother was now. That first year, when Henrik was fifteen, was the worst. It was hard for Kol to look at his baby brother's face and see nothing of the brother he knew. It was hard to look into his brown eyes, which used to be so warm and kind, and see nothing but a cold blankness.

Kol had thought once, very briefly, that the boy who had come back from death hadn't been Henrik at all, and that the person traveling with them now was some sort of imposter. He had dismissed it, though, simply because there had been a single moment where Henrik shined through. It was when he had finally mastered Esther's daylight ring spell. Kol had lost his while swimming in a lake, and Henrik was tasked with making him a new one. The spell was incomplete in the grimoire, so Henrik had missed the part where the stone was supposed to be in a ray of sunlight while it was being spelled. When he figured it out, though, genuine delight had burst across his face, and he had even excitedly turned toward Finn, who'd been the closest to him, and simply said, I did it!

It was the only time in months that any of them had seen him smile. None of them were likely to forget it.

Henrik's sixteenth year was the adjustment period for Kol. He'd had to come to the hard conclusion that Henrik wasn't ever going to be himself again. The reality hit him late one night, when he'd woken up thirsty and had immediately noticed that Henrik wasn't in the pallet nearby. He must have cloaked himself as he left, to not wake up any of his siblings. Kol got up to try to find him, and ended up following the sound of water splashing more than a mile away. He ran the rest of the way there, and broke through the trees to find Henrik swimming in a large lake, enjoying the time to himself. Kol, who knew his brother well enough to know when he wanted to be alone but cursed with a protective streak, stayed where he was in the shadows of the trees and chose to keep an eye on him from a distance.

Henrik had recently hit a growth spurt—much to everyone's relief, as none of them were sure that he wasn't frozen like them before he'd shot up in height in a little less than two months—and now he had an abundance of restless energy he couldn't let out properly. Kol had suggested letting him out to hunt animals or to even simply run, but both Elijah and Finn had refused. What if Mikael finds us when he's out? No, it's too dangerous. Kol had noticed Henrik chafing under the growing number of rules. He still didn't show much emotion, but when he did feel something, it was usually negative. Annoyance and disdain, mostly, though a few times he'd gotten angry. He was glad to see that, instead of lashing out in a reckless way, Henrik was putting all his restless energy into something productive.

Swimming strengthened the body more than hunting did, and considering how skilled Henrik seemed to be, he'd been coming out to swim regularly.

Kol waited in the shadows until Henrik grew tired and pulled himself out of the lake. He'd brought a wool blanket to dry himself, and then he redressed in his clothes. He was smart enough not to actually swim in the only clothing he owned, but the night was chilly and his hair was getting too long. He'd catch his death if he wasn't careful.

"Swim when it's warmer, would you?" Kol requested when Henrik got close. He wasn't particularly surprised when Henrik only cast him a single glance as he passed. He'd known all along that Kol was there. Kol smiled and skipped to catch up to him, throwing an arm over his shoulder. "I know you're tired of our protectiveness, but that doesn't mean you should get sick. You're sleeping by the fire tonight—"

"I don't sleep," Henrik murmured, blunt and cold. He was tired of his siblings suffocating him, and he knew exactly what to say to make each sibling freeze in horror. In Kol's case, it was revealing something like that. Henrik had mastered faking a lot of things at that point, and sleeping was one of them. All he needed was a relaxation spell. Seeing Kol freeze and seeing his smile dim, Henrik continued. "I know that I came back wrong. I can feel it. None of you need to hover around me anymore trying to see something human. It's a waste."

Kol swallowed.

"Do you really feel...nothing?" he whispered, and for the first time in two years, he saw Henrik pause. Saw his usually blank expression twist in thought and confusion.

"I feel physical things," Henrik explained slowly, and for the first time, Kol realized this was what they should have done in the first place. Instead of gossiping around the fire when they thought he was sleeping, they should have just asked him. "The water was freezing. Fire is warm. Taste is the same. I feel tired, too, but I can never sleep for long, if at all. But..." Henrik trailed off, eyes drifting off to the side as he sank deeper into thought. "I can remember what happiness felt like before, and fright and sadness and everything else. I don't feel any of those things now. I know I should. Sometimes I think I do feel some of it, in small and short moments, but they never last long enough for me to know if I'm actually feeling something or if I'm just remembering how it should feel. But I can't fix it. I've come to terms with that. It's high time the lot of you do the same."

The next three years were a blur, except for one thing: Henrik learned how to fake his reactions and emotions. And he managed to fool every single one of them at least once except for Kol, who had never forgotten their conversation that night.

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None of them knew Henrik had his emotions back at first. They had been too relieved, too freshly grief-stricken. Henrik had died of disease, his body had been on a funeral pyre, and then suddenly he was gasping awake and jerking off the pyre itself. It was understandable that none of them had really noticed that Henrik was just as panicked as the rest of them in that moment. None of them had expected him to come back again. And it was especially understandable that no one had noticed since, a few minutes after his revival, Henrik had simply said I don't feel well before he had bent at the waist and proceeded to puke up what could only be described as corpse's blood and rotted flesh.

His own body was ejecting what had rotted away inside of him while he had been dead. It was a horrifying thing to witness, and it only got worse when they realized it didn't happen only once. It could last for hours. Rebekah and Klaus had both started crying in the first few minutes, and Finn got so ill that he had to keep his distance. Kol had gone numb, eyes wide and wet, face oddly blank as the person he loved the most in the world experienced what was possibly the worst kind of pain imaginable. Because it was definitely painful. Kol could see the way Henrik's entire body was spasming, could hear the awful sounds both inside his body and coming out of his mouth. Elijah was the only one who shot forward after the initial shock wore off, the only one that kneeled down beside Henrik and bent down close, murmuring soothing things to him as his hand rubbed circles on his back.

Considering how awful it was to watch, none of them thought anything of it when, after it finally came to an end, Henrik had burst into tears in a way that could only be described as hysterical. It was a perfectly natural reaction, after all, and even someone as emotionless as Henrik wouldn't have been able to endure that with a straight, blank face. And if any of them had thought anything of it, those thoughts immediately left them when Henrik reverted back to his old behavior afterward.

Then Henrik snuck off a few days later, leaving the small village they were hiding in and disappearing into the woods. Kol found him curled under a small tree, the branches bending toward the ground and creating a natural safe haven, the leaves falling down like vines and keeping him hidden. The only reason Kol knew where to look was because he could hear muffled noises, like someone's hand was over a mouth. He pushed the leaves aside and found Henrik sitting there, his knees up to his chest and a hand pressed over his mouth. Sobs were wracking his entire body, and something that could only be described as panic was twisting his face. His eyes, previously clenched closed, flew open at Kol's arrival.

"Well," Kol said gently, "I suppose it's gone and fixed itself, then." It was the only thing he could really think of saying, and it didn't make any of it better. It didn't make Henrik's tears go away, didn't make the panic ease. Realizing that, Kol sank under the small sanctuary of leaves and simply waited. It wasn't long before Henrik was moving, seeing the calm silence and waiting period for what it was: an invitation. He was sinking into Kol a second later, staying curled up, his head pillowing against Kol's thigh. He was still trembling, so Kol got to work petting his hair and rubbing a hand up and down his arm. It was how they used to comfort him, back when he'd needed comfort.

By the time he stopped trembling and there were no more tears left to cry, the sun was rising over the trees and his eyelids were drooping in exhaustion. Kol's wrists ached from all the comforting touches, and his back hurt from sitting in the same position for so long, but he felt nothing but relief. Henrik had survived this. He had survived an onslaught of emotions that had crippled him, had turned him into a trembling panicked ball. Kol could survive a few silly aches.

"Feeling better?" Kol asked lightly, still petting his hair. A huff akin to a laugh left Henrik's mouth.

"No," he whispered, and what little amusement Kol felt wilted away. There was a beat of silence. "Can I stay here for a little while longer? You don't have to. I know you'd rather be doing something else." And there it was. That selfless part of Henrik that had died when he had the first time, at fourteen.

"We can stay as long as you need," Kol reassured, still petting his hair. And when Henrik sniffled and pressed his face against Kol's leg, Kol made a promise to himself. His family had always taken Henrik for granted, in his opinion. They always claimed time with him like it was something they deserved, like his time and his space wasn't actually his, but theirs. Kol had been guilty of it, too, but seeing him seek out so much time alone in recent years had put things in perspective.

He was never going to be selfish with Henrik. Not anymore. But he would make sure Henrik knew he'd be welcome anytime he didn't want to be alone but felt like he was. And that was a promise he never, not even once, broke.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: These were just small little excerpts I had sitting on my google doc drive for a while now, and I figured, since I haven't updated anything in a a while, I'd upload this here. Let me know if you want more oneshots about Henrik's past xoxo