Chapter Text
*******
“That’s impossible.”
But then again, nothing was when it came to his brother.
So it turned out, Elijah realized as soon as they brought the woman out, that it was indeed possible. That much he could tell from the barely audible heartbeat thumping away next to the sound of the woman’s own.
And if one thing was for certain, this was going to be messy.
Damage control then, starting with this woman. Elijah asked for and was granted a word in private with her. He then proceeded to tell her everything he felt she needed to know. Which was, well, everything.
“I’m Hayley,” she said, directly after ensuring Elijah was aware of her (rightfully) abysmal opinion of his their father, and shook his hand. “You should probably know my name if you’re going to tell me your whole life story.”
Elijah paused for a long moment, because he hadn’t told her everything, had he? And he had to tell her, didn’t he? God, of course he did. It wasn’t a question of if or even when. He could hardly justify throwing this poor girl out of the frying pan and into the fire to save himself a bit of discomfort.
He told her about their father’s hunt for Niklaus, for all of them. He told her about their father’s death at his brother’s hands, how instead of it bringing peace to his troubled sibling, it had only made everything worse.
“I wonder if perhaps this baby might be a way for my brother to find happiness,” he mused out loud. Hayley watched him from where she sat. “This child might fix everything. Or....I must be honest with you, my dear...it might truly drive him off the deep end.”
She frowned at him, suddenly very apprehensive and again, rightfully so, but said nothing, waiting for him to continue.
“You see…” Elijah broke off, struggling to find the words. It may have actually happened to his brother, but this was a topic that pained all of the Mikaelson children. Intimately so. “My brother…had a baby himself once.”
“...You mean like… himself, himself?”
“Yes. I am told it is an attribute of some men of the werewolf line. Were you aware of it?”
Hayley nodded. “I know it used to be…not uncommon. Anymore though most kids end up getting like surgery so their hormones don’t get screwed up or whatever, but I knew of a couple guys who had kids that way, yeah. And Klaus did?”
Elijah nodded. “He had a daughter. It was before we became vampires. He was...quite young.” He smiled a little. “I suppose you’ve caught me in a lie. Because of his pregnancy we knew long before he killed someone that he was a wolf. We tell the story as we do to preserve his privacy per his...ah...request.”
“What happened to her? His baby?”
He tried to find the words to explain it to her. All he could do was stand there, mouth gaping like a fish, until a single tear rolled down his cheek. He couldn’t tell her, so he showed her.
*******
He knew as soon as he walked out that he had made a terrible mistake, as he always did whenever he walked out on his brother.
Coward!
Even Rebekah followed him soon enough, trembling. Elijah hugged her.
“Come, let’s go find Kol.”
Rebekah stood firm. “I might not be able to be in there with Nik, but I’m not going any further than this until I know he’s okay!”
So Elijah stayed with her, proud of her strength and wishing he had more of it.
Perhaps the fact that there were no raised voices should have tipped him off that something was truly wrong.
A piercing, agonized scream that came from the inside the house was enough to send both of them running.
Elijah was almost sick when he saw what was inside. Mikael, standing over their brother, looking (if Elijah didn’t know better) almost a little shaken. Klaus, crouched on the floor, kneeling over his baby…who was…was….
Rebekah stared to cry. Elijah did, too.
He would never forgive himself for walking out. Neither would Rebekah.
*******
Hayley wrenched away from him, a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with shock.
“Oh my God…”
Elijah nodded and wiped the tear off his cheek.
“No wonder he’s…the way he is.” She ran a hand through her hair. “The fact that he even survived that…”
That, Elijah would agree, was truly a miracle. One he suspected was only accomplished out of sheer spite on his brother’s part. And a great deal of begging on his and Rebekah’s.
“I told you this, Hayley, so that you might better understand some of my brother’s actions. It does not excuse them, but it does explain them. I would, however, caution you to never mention to my brother that you know this. He has all but forbidden my siblings and I to speak of it.”
Yes, he could recall a time, a few months after the incident, that he had attempted to inquire as to how his brother was feeling. Niklaus had nearly broken his jaw before warning him never to speak of it again. He then proceeded to actually break both Kol and Finn’s noses and had shouted at Rebekah until she cried when they later inquired the same.
“Why?”
“Now that is a long story.”
“Longer than the one you’ve already told me?”
Fair enough. Elijah cracked a smile and elaborated.
“Our father could hardly have word getting around that he murdered a newborn child. That would have surely meant his death at the hands of our neighbors. So instead, he spread it around the village that Nikalus’s baby had been stillborn, and that my brother had gone mad with grief. That he was making up stories about how his daughter had been murdered to cope with the loss, the poor boy.” Elijah spat out the last words. “That very nearly did drive my brother mad. I cannot begin to imagine how painful it must have been to hear that after everything that happened.”
“And none of you said anything?”
Elijah shook his head. “One of my…numerous regrets.”
(He recalled how his brother had quaked where he stood when the first villager had expressed their sympathies for his stillborn daughter. Of course he had corrected her. She had nodded sympathetically and carried on, not reacting to the news of a baby’s murder. Mikael had been all to happy to provide clarity on the woman’s beliefs and offer a substantial threat of violence later that night. Niklaus had crumbled.
Elijah had spent the entire night with Nik tight in his arms for fear of what his brother might do if left alone for even a second. To their father or to himself.)
“After all that...I can only assume never speaking of it again was the least painful option. I can hardly blame him for doing what he needed to do.”
Hayley played with the tassles on her sweater. “So he just…forgot about her?”
He thought of his brother’s recurring nightmares with the barely audible whimpers of don’t touch her, the 52 years he spent cursed where he would scream that out loud for hours, the melancholy look on his face whenever he would pass people holding newborns.
“Oh, I sincerely doubt that.”
“What was her name?”
“If my brother ever gave her one, he never told us what it was. With everything that happened...he never truly mourned her, I fear.” He sighed and turned back to Hayley. “In any case, I hope that…this baby might be a way to save him from himself. Give him something of a...second chance.”
“I’m glad you feel that way.”
If another thing was certain, Elijah was increasingly disliking this witch. And my, did her plan (which sounded remarkably like blackmail) have some holes.
*******
“No. It’s impossible.” Indeed, it was not. Klaus would know. Personally, intimately, he would know. “Vampires cannot procreate!”
Because, in his human form, he could. He had. And ever since Tatia’s blood was forced down his throat and his father’s sword shoved through his sternum, he no longer could.
It’s not like there hadn’t been opportunity. By the time condoms were even invented during the 19th century, Klaus had had 800 years of sleeping around with men to get himself knocked up again. And nothing. Not even all the times (more than he would ever admit) that he had hoped to find himself with child, all the times in the depths of his loneliness and misery that he had prayed to a god he didn’t believe in to give him a baby (to give him his daughter back) and nothing.
So no, all this was bullshit, and truly was the cruelest joke anyone could play on him, and he had every intention of staking Elijah at least twice for being a part of it.
“But werewolves can!”
His mouth gaped like a dead fish as he struggled to find words. He turned to stare at Elijah. “Did you not tell her?”
“Magic made you a vampire,” the witch continued. “But you were born a werewolf.”
“You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“You’re the Original hybrid. The first of your kind. And this pregnancy…one of nature’s loopholes.”
Loop...holes.
His heart clenched as the memory of what had happened all those years ago came unbidden to his mind. The memory of what had happened to his baby. Mikael ripping her from Esther’s arms and Klaus, unable to do anything as his father broke her spine over his knee. That sound.
God, that sound.
And the spirits wouldn’t bring her back. Her, a defenseless newborn! The purest creature on this Earth and the spirits would not grant her the life stolen from her, and this witch would dare speak to him of loopholes?
So, naturally, he did what he did best when he was upset. Explode.
He rounded on Hayley. “You’ve been with someone else, admit it!” he shouted at her. She recoiled from him ever so slightly even as Elijah stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“I spent days held captive in an alligator bayou because they think that I’m carrying some magical miracle baby,” she snapped right back. “Don’t you think I would have fessed up if it wasn’t yours?”
…That was fair.
“My sister gave her life to confirm it,” the witch went on (Klaus wanted to rip her head off). “Because of Jane-Anne’s sacrifice, the lives of this girl and her baby are now controlled by us. If you don’t help us then so help me this girl will not live to see her first maternity dress!”
“Wait, what?!” came Hayley’s stunned remark. Then Elijah was saying something about killing Marcel himself, but no no the witch had a clear plan you all have to do it her way, blah blah.
Klaus’s head was spinning.
“And there are rules!” the witch finished. Her voice blurred in his head with a much more sinister one.
“How dare you…” he hissed. “Threaten. Me! With what you wrongfully perceive to be my weaknesses—“ He barely restrained himself from striking Elijah’s head from his shoulders at his brother’s eye roll. “But I won’t stand here and listen to any more of your lies!”
“Niklaus.” Elijah’s strong voice stalled his exit. He turned back to face his brother. “Listen.”
And he could hear it, goddamnit, he could hear it. (What he wouldn’t have given to hear his own baby’s heartbeat when he’d been pregnant, and what he wouldn’t have given to press his ear to his daughter’s chest and hear it then). His eyes stung.
And his brother had the nerve to smile at him (just like he had all those years ago as he comforted his half dead pregnant brother sobbing on a log in the middle of the woods, fuck) and Klaus was crying for real and he just couldn’t do this again, plain and simple.
“Kill her, and the baby. What do I care...”
As he stormed away in a rage, tears fully pouring down his face by then, he wondered if that wasn’t the biggest lie he’d ever told in his life.
*******
“So much for ‘saving him from himself,’” Hayley hissed at Elijah. “Screw this! I’m out of here.”
Elijah could hardly blame Hayley for wanting to get the hell. But they wouldn’t let her leave.
“No one touches the girl,” he warned. “I’ll fix this.” He would. He had to.
*******
Of course Elijah followed him.
“It’s a trick,” Klaus hissed.
“No, brother, it’s a gift. It’s a chance, it’s our chance!”
Klaus was not in the mood for this. “To what?”
“To start over. To take back everything we lost. Everything that was taken from us.”
Klaus blinked and another tear ran down his cheek at the insinuation. “Don’t you dare.”
“Our own parents came to despise us—“
“Oh, is that all?”
“Our family was ruined, we were ruined.” Ruined. That was a pretty good word to describe it, actually. “This is all that you have ever wanted.” He quickly corrected himself, holding out a placating hand at the spark of rage in Klaus’s eyes. “All that we have ever wanted. As a family.”
Elijah could barely contain his joy. that much was obvious, what with the twinkle in his eye, the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Honestly, Klaus should be happy, too, because Elijah was right, this is what he’d wanted (he didn’t even have to give birth again, he should at the very least be grateful for that). So why wasn’t he happy?
He stared back at his brother, allowing anger to cover his pain. “I will not be manipulated.”
He tried to walk away. Elijah was always trying to get him to walk away from a fight instead of starting one, he should be proud of Klaus for not immediately ripping every witch’s head off their shoulders, why wouldn’t he just let him leave and drown his memories in a few bottles of whiskey?
“So what? With them this girl and her child, your child, live!” Elijah looked so proud of himself. Klaus wanted to vomit.
“I’m gonna kill every last one of them,” he replied cheerily and shoved his brother, turning the other way. Only to find that Elijah was still in front of him.
“And then what? You return to Mystic Falls to resume your life as the hated one? The evil hybrid? Is it so important to you that people quake at the sound of your name?”
Klaus was done with this conversation. Klaus had been done with this conversation. “People quake with fear because I have the power to make them afraid! What will this child offer me? Will it guarantee me power?”
Because, truly, if he had no power, he could do nothing to protect the child. And if he couldn’t protect it, then he would surely lose it. That he could not, /would not/, do. Not again.
He should’ve just walked away from Elijah.
“Family is power, Niklaus. Love, loyalty, that’s power! We swore that to one another a thousand years ago before life, before Mikael, tore away what little humanity you had left. Before ego, before anger, paranoia, created in this person before me someone I can barely even recognize as my own brother.”
You know what, Elijah, you try living through what I’ve lived through. What I’ve been /put/ through, and see if you come out the other side with your humanity still intact.
You try watching your baby girl die right in front of you, and then again and again and again for 52 years every /fucking/ day, and dream of it for a thousand years after that, see her face in every baby you come across, and we’ll see if you still have a heart.
He never did tell anyone exactly what it was that tormented him then. His siblings had an idea, he knew, but he never really told them what he saw. Why would he? Why should he?
But the thing that really killed him, every day, was that his daughter had been murdered not five feet in front of him and he hadn’t been able to do anything to save her.
Klaus stared at Elijah as he continued to talk about family or some shit Klaus wasn’t even sure he believed was real anymore (at least not for them. At least not for him).
“Always and forever. I am asking you to stay here, I will help you, and I will stand by you, and I will be your brother! We will build a home here together.” Elijah took Klaus’s face in his hands. “And I promise you, what happened to your daughter a thousand years ago will not happen again here. Mikael is dead, Niklaus. He cannot hurt you, us, anymore. So save this girl, save your child. You have a second chance at this, Niklaus, take it!”
Didn’t that sound familiar. Didn’t that sound like what Elijah had promised him back then. Don’t worry, Nik, I won’t let Mikael hurt you anymore, I’ll grow a pair and stand up for my little brother, but when he tells me to get lost I’ll just get up and leave and let him kill your baby. And then when you actually turn into a werewolf I’ll actually help him curse you.
Klaus looked his brother in the face and hissed, “No.”
Elijah let him walk away.
*******
Elijah really couldn’t imagine how painful this must be for his brother. His daughter’s death had been the single most painful thing that had ever happened to him. The thing that had truly destroyed the brother Elijah once knew. That thing that first put Klaus on the path that made him the monster that he was.
Elijah could understand not wanting to feel that pain again, but he wouldn’t! Why couldn’t Niklaus see that?
“Given a chance at happiness, he runs in the other direction,” he told his sister.
“Well that child, if it’s even his, is better off without him!”
“But he’s not better off without that child, Rebekah, if the past thousand years have been anything to go by.” He was met with silence, so he continued. “And neither are we.”
“At what point in your immortal life will you stop searching for his redemption? Our brother died with his baby a thousand years ago, and he’s not coming back any more than his daughter is, Elijah.”
“With this child, he might, Rebekah! If anything can redeem him, this can.”
“But it won’t.”
Elijah took a deep breath. “I will stop searching for his redemption when I believe there is none to be found, lest I forget that I walked out on our brother when he needed us the most. You would do well to remember that you did, too.” And with that he hung up.
Perhaps that wasn’t fair. It was true they had done so much to try and make up for that one grievous error (but it wasn’t just once, was it? Out of all the years Mikael had taken his hatred out on Niklaus, Elijah could count on one hand the number of times anyone at all had intervened.)
Elijah would regret that to his dying day. He wished he could find the words to tell his brother how sorry he was. But then again, that didn’t really mean jack shit, did it?
So he did the only thing he could do, which was right his brother’s wrongs, clean up his mess, and try to talk some sense into him. Or, if he had to, beat it into him.
No, Elijah was not above that.
*******
So, Klaus continued to do what he did best, which was of course make a right mess of things.
He…kind of tore one of Marcel’s lackey’s throats out…oops.
So what, he was feeling emotional.
He watched a man paint. The bartender from earlier stood next to him and read his heart to its very core with one look. He left her standing in the street so she wouldn’t see the tears on his face. And he got drunk. Very drunk. Which was, of course, when Elijah found him again.
“Have I not made clear my desire to be left alone?”
“You demand to be left alone at least once a decade. Your words have ceased to have impact.”
And such misery was welling in his chest that he just couldn’t stand it, so he threw his liquor bottle against what appeared to be a covered piano and turned to face his brother.
“Why must you keep harping on about the baby? That child will never be born. In fact, Hayley will be dead already.”
Elijah slammed him against a carriage. “You will not walk away from this!”
“Let me go!”
“I will not!” Elijah threw him into a table hard enough to break it, so naturally Klaus returned the favor, throwing him into an iron fence hard enough to make a dent.
It was only fair.
Elijah picked himself up and yanked out a pole. “Even if I have to spend eternity saving you from your own wretched, vile self.”
Klaus was expecting many things, but he was not expecting his brother to beat him.
“If I have to beat you as father used to beat you to remind you of your own humanity! To care, about anything!”
Oh, that struck a nerve, and Elijah knew it, too. Klaus felt totally vindicated in taking the pole from his brother and responding in kind He hit him hard in the jaw and Elijah stayed down.
Klaus was too tired for this.
“You are beyond pathetic, Elijah.” His voice sounded as exhausted as he felt.
His brother wiped the blood off his mouth. “Who’s more pathetic? The one who has hope to make his family whole…” He paused dramatically. Klaus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Or the coward who can only see the world through his own fear?”
A very credible fear, he would be willing to argue at literally any other time.
“I haven’t cared about anything in centuries. Why have you?”
“Well, because I failed you.” Klaus’s ice cold heart clenched at his brother’s words. He hadn’t been expecting that either. “Because the first time our father laid a hand on you, I should’ve struck him dead. And if I couldn’t do it then, then every time thereafter I should have done something, anything! I should have never walked out on you and your daughter.”
Klaus shut his eyes against the pain and a tear or two rolled down his cheek. “Elijah, don’t—“
“No, Niklaus, let me say this. And I could say I’m sorry until the cows come home and it will never make up for how I failed you. How I failed my niece, who I promised you I would protect with my life. But if I couldn’t do that, then at the very least I promised you always and forever, family above all. I didn’t keep it then, but on my life and all that is good I will keep it now. I cannot imagine how painful all this must be for you, what it must bring up, but I will not let you walk away from it. Always and forever, Niklaus.”
The onslaught of emotions was too much for Nik to handle. So he did what he normally did and just opted out. Buried them deep and laughed at Elijah, voice betraying the true misery brewing deep in what used to be his soul. But he did help him up.
“You are a sentimental fool,” he murmured in his brother’s ear.
“Perhaps. But I’ve lasted the long in spite of it, haven’t I?”
Finally, finally, Elijah left him alone… for a couple of hours at least.
He found him again on a park bench at 4 in the morning where, rather inspired by the artist from earlier in the night, he had been once again attempting to draw his daughter.
Even after all these years, he could still remember every detail of her tiny (dead) face. Perhaps that was why he could never finish a drawing of her. He had never seen her alive, and he just could not bear to draw her the only way he had seen her.
When his tears had once again ruined the paper, he gave up and just sat there, watching the night traffic until he was left completely and blissfully alone.
At which point, of course, his brother reappeared.
“Here to give me another pep talk on the joys of fatherhood?”
“I’ve said all I needed to say.”
Klaus hadn’t. So he stalled for a bit, talking about the city, how much he liked it, all the while the words that had needed saying for a good long while sat on the tip of his tongue. Elijah indulged him for a while before finally prompting him.
“What is on your mind, brother?”
What was on his mind. What indeed. He didn’t care to talk about what was actually on his mind, or on the damp paper crumpled in his fist. So he picked the first thing that came to mind.
“This town was my home once. And in my absence, Marcel has got anything I ever wanted. Power, loyalty…family. I made him in my image and he has bettered me.”
Ah yes, the topic of his adopted son. Reason #85,000 why a large part of him didn’t want to go through with this.
“I want what he has. I want it back.” He threw in an ‘I want to be king’ for good measure. Throw his brother off the scent.
“So is that all this child means to you? A grab for power?”
Klaus pondered, not for the first time that night, ripping his brother’s head off. Of course not, you idiot.
This child could never replace his daughter, but…it did almost seem like a second chance. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that.
“What does it mean to you?” He cursed the weakness in his voice.
“I think this child could offer you the once thing you never believed you had.”
Oh boy. This was going down a road Klaus did not want to go. After a thousand years, he was so sick of crying. “And what’s that?”
“The unconditional love of a family.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck—
“Tell Sophie Deveraux we have a deal.”
Klaus wasn’t looking at him, was so sick of his brother seeing him cry, but he could sense Elijah was smiling.
“I’m proud of you,” Elijah whispered, and then Klaus was being pulled into a hug. If he blinked and a few more tears spilled down his cheeks, then well, no one was there to see it. “I swear to you, brother, what happened to your daughter will not happen again.” Klaus didn’t respond, and instead rested his ear against Elijah’s chest and listened to his heartbeat.
They stayed like that for longer than Klaus would care to admit.
“I don’t even have to give birth again,” Klaus murmured at one point. Elijah’s laugh rumbling in his chest was almost as comforting as the sound of his heart.
*******
Elijah was right. What happened to his daughter would not happen to this child. Klaus would ensure it. But to ensure it, he would have to eliminate any and all weaknesses, of which he only had one.
Elijah.
Who would just have to forgive him the dagger in his chest and the trip down to Marcel’s. Call it karma, retribution, whatever you want. Elijah promised his life to protect his child, so it was only fair that he kept his promise, now wasn’t it?
El Fin