Over time, Lucas began watching The Originals with different eyes.
The initial enchantment with the grandeur of the Mikaelson family slowly gave way to a strange sense of discomfort. All of it — the speeches about unity, about protecting one another at all costs — sounded beautiful until the truth revealed itself: they were always betraying each other.
Klaus didn't trust anyone. Elijah suffocated his own desires in the name of an honor that seemed to serve no one else. Rebekah longed for freedom, but was always pulled back into the same toxic cycle. Marcel, who should've been family, was treated like a threat.
"Family above all," they repeated. But Lucas had already noticed: it was a poorly disguised lie dressed up as a motto.
They attacked each other. Manipulated each other. Hurt each other deeply. And even so, they stayed together, as if they didn't know how to be anything else.
In real life, Lucas barely knew what it meant to have a family. His was distant, cold. Each person trapped in their own bubble, and no one ever asked how he felt.
Maybe that's why he had clung so tightly to the Mikaelsons — not because they were perfect, but because, in some way, they were still… real.
Real in their chaos.
Real in their pain.
Real in the way they carried their wounds and still called each other siblings.
And in that mess, Lucas saw a mirror.
Not of what he had, but of what he feared he might become.