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“You can hold her,” Hayley said. Hope squirmed inside her mother’s arms. Her face was a bright, wrinkled pink and it was hard to distinguish any features.
Cami smiled and said, “Are you sure? I don’t want to drop her”--
“You won’t drop her.” Hayley gingerly handed the baby over to Cami. Camille watched baby Hope with a small smile. She was so young and precious. It was hard to believe that they’d all been so young, once. In a world of destruction, Hope was the most innocent thing in this city.
“Hi, baby,” Camille said. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m your Aunt Cami.”
She received a call at two-thirty in the afternoon as she was walking down Rue Saint-Germain. Cami held the phone to one ear and said, “Hayley, is everything okay?” She braced herself, expecting the worst: Hope had been kidnapped. Klaus and Elijah were trying to kill each other again. The werewolves had mounted an attack against the Quarter --
“It’s Hope,” Hayley said, her voice frantic. “I’m so, so sorry to call you on such short notice. But I need to head down to the bayou, there’s an emergency, and there’s no one to watch Hope”--
Cami cut her off. “I’ll watch Hope,” she said. “Don’t worry.” She heard Hayley breathe a sigh of relief.
So she sat with Hope, who was newly teething, in the midst of the Mikaelson mansion. Hope’s favorite game was to play with plastic rings and throw them in the air, or to make up stories using a carved wooden knight Klaus had made for her.
“Hope,” Cami said, “what story are we playing today?”
“Princess,” Hope babbled.
“What about the princess? Is she the prettiest princess in the world? Does she”-- Cami dropped her voice down to a whisper -- “slay the dragon?”
“Yes,” Hope said, and continued to throw her plastic rings in the air. Cami laughed. Hope was so creative, and so smart, and so funny. She wished Hope didn’t have to grow up in an environment like this, in a family with a thousand enemies. She wished Hope could stay like this for a while longer and be a child.
Cami couldn’t breathe. The curse -- the fucking curse -- was worming its way through her veins, making the world spin. Her hands were shaking, her skin was flaming, and she knew this was the end. Death was something you forgot about when you lived amongst vampires. But even immortals can die, and death never remains any less painful. She thought about the vampires’ whose throats have been cut out, the people she murdered, and wonders how it felt for them to die.
The door creaked open, and Hayley stood there in shadow. Hope, who was nearly three, clutched onto her mother for dear life. At the sight of Hope, Cami let herself smile. Sweet, sweet innocent Hope.
“Hi, baby,” she said.
Hayley sighed and said, “I keep thinking about how my daughter’s never going to remember you.” Cami’s heart shattered. Hayley was right -- long-term memories don’t begin to develop until the age of three, meaning that all the time she’d spent with Hope (babysitting her, getting her to stop crying, creating fantastical games about princesses) would be forgotten.
“Oh,” Cami said. She bit back tears. “Tell Hope -- tell her when she’s older, that I am very proud of her. That I love her and know that she will be an incredible witch someday.”
“I will,” Hayley said.
“Can I -- can I hold her one more time?” Hayley nodded, and placed a squirming Hope, who was nearly too big to be held, in Cami’s arms.
“Hi, baby,” Cami said. “It’s your Aunt Cami. I love you.”
“Love you!” Hope repeated. Cami laughed. She knew that Hope’s future wouldn’t be easy. She was inheriting her family’s enemies, a splintered city, and being raised by the world’s first vampire. But Camille knew Hope would always live up to her name. That she would bring Hope to New Orleans, to her family, to the werewolves and the vampires and the witches.
“Stay innocent, okay?” Cami whispered. “I love you. I’m going to miss you very, very much.” She held on for a second longer before letting go.
***
Rebekah had been annoyed when Nik had announced he’d managed to not only get some random whore pregnant, but said whore was also a werewolf hell-bent on destroying the Mikaelsons. And now their fucking love child was a magical baby who could kill them all, which sounded like rubbish.
It wasn’t like she’d known her brother didn’t have the capability to fuck random girls, but vampire biology was supposed to make them childless forever. Rebekah had always wanted a child. She had always wanted a family. And so finding out her idiot, useless brother was the one who ended up with a bastard child made her more jealous that she cared to admit.
Even more annoying -- sadistic Klaus was now convinced that this baby was his redemption. “It’s going to be perfect, dear sister,” Klaus pronounced. “This baby will restore new hope to our family and vanquish our enemies.”
“I’m glad you have your priorities straight,” Rebekah said. She kept filing her nails.
Elijah’s opinion on said baby was, “It’s the best decision we can make,” and the baby mama -- Hayley, who seemed just fucked-up enough to slot perfectly into their family -- spent most of her time clutching her growing stomach and worrying about the pregnancy.
The baby came, and it was beautiful. Well, all babies are varying levels of ugly, but the Mikaelson genes had never produced a truly ugly child. Excepting Kol, of course. Hope was the child’s name, and Rebekah thought she was the most wonderful baby in the world.
For the first time, Rebekah could have her dream: of raising a child. Of being a mother. She cradled Hope in her arms and told the baby stories, about their family, fairytales that Esther used to tell her children. She sang her lullabies before she rocked her to sleep. She imagined having a baby of her own, one with her bright blue eyes and soft smile.
But of fucking course, Rebekah could never be happy -- so Hope was taken away, again. She would never have a baby, never be a mother, all because of her family’s machinations and goddamn biology.
The next time she saw Hope, the wee one was practically toddling around the mansion. “Are you certain that’s safe,” Rebekah said, as she watched Hope crawl towards the antique vase on a side table.
“Safe as we can be,” Hayley said. Rebekah had to admit, she admired Hayley as a mother: she was clearly protective of her daughter and wanted to make sure her child was always safe.
Somehow, Hope looked like a perfect mixture of Klaus and Hayley: she had her father’s nose and her mother’s smile. Time would only tell if her personality would develop along the “sadistic murderer” part of her family’s genes or the “sarcastic werewolf” side. Either way, that child was going to develop an unhealthy taste for blood and a sarcastic, biting wit.
Rebekah remembered seeing Hope for the first time in five years. The last time she’d seen Hope, the baby was adorable, barely babbling out more than a few words. She could walk for a few steps before falling down, and her idea of sharing was hurtling a sippy cup in Hayley’s direction.
Seven-year-old Hope looked like a miniature Hayley: same smile, same hair. She looked like Klaus, too, the way he smirked and the way he curled his nose in distaste was plainly visible. Seven-year-old Hope could speak, full sentences, and she understood sarcasm and explained to Rebekah multiplication tables. “I like school,” she announced.
Rebekah could hardly believe the babe she’d once sung songs to was a child. Practically a woman, someone with thoughts and feelings and opinions. How quickly that had changed. How quickly children grow up, lose their innocence, become the same as their parents. Rebekah wondered when she lost her innocence. She wondered how much Hope knew of the truth.
She was in New York City for another supply run when she saw a familiar brunette face walking down Fifth Avenue. Rebekah readjusted her dress and walked forward. Sure enough, it was Hope: with a shorter haircut, taller heels, and winged eyeliner.
“Hope,” Rebekah called. Hope turned, and at the sight of her aunt her face lit up. Rebekah smiled, and had to admit she’d missed her niece. Hope had turned twenty-one the past May, and was traveling around the world as a leader of differing vampire clans. She was seen as the new hope for the next generation of the supernatural world, working to bring people together.
“Aunt Rebekah, how are you?”
“Aren’t you grown up,” Rebekah said.
Hope laughed and smiled in a way that was pure Hayley. “You always say that,” she said.
God, where has the time gone, Rebekah thought. “You want to get some lunch?” Rebekah asked. “There’s a great restaurant on the Lower East Side.”
“Sounds lovely,” Hope said, and that was pure Klaus, formality tinged with sarcasm. As they walked down the street, Rebekah watched her baby niece. Her baby niece who wasn’t a baby anymore.
It is strange, how all children must grow up, but they grow up into better versions of their parents. Rebekah loved her niece, and some days looking at her she still yearned for a child. She would always want to be a mother. But being an aunt was a different kind of protective love.
Somehow, her brother’s fuck-ups had led to all this, and maybe in the end magic witch babies had been worth it.
***
Elijah said, “Hope, you’re not allowed to paint on the walls.”
“But I want to,” Hope, who was nine, said. She held her dripping paintbrush above her head. Flecks of yellow and orange paint dripped to the floor, and Elijah tried not to think about the mahogany carpet.
“Hope, you’re too old to be acting this childish,” Elijah said. “Why don’t we get you some paper, or canvas, your father has canvases lying around somewhere”--
“I want to express myself,” Hope proclaimed. “It’s modern art.”
Elijah mentally cursed out his brother for whatever he’d told Hope about art -- despite his brother's constant love of art, Klaus somehow loved Jackson Pollock’s trashy pieces -- and exhaled. He readjusted his cufflinks. He breathed in.
“Modern art is lovely, darling,” he said, “but wouldn’t you prefer paper? Or a larger canvas? If you paint the walls, we’ll simply have to repaint them every few months, and what a waste of our time that would be.”
Hope stared at him. Silence. Then, with another flick of her paintbrush, “Uncle Elijah! You should paint with me!”
Elijah considered the cost-benefit analysis: how much was this suit worth, how much had the carpet been worth, what would Hayley say when she came home, would Klaus be angry at Elijah for stepping into a parental role. He considered the positives and negatives and said, “Let’s get some paper.”
So Elijah rolled a piece of butcher paper across the floor, and rolled up his sleeves, and the two of them painted. Hope flung colors across the paper, red and orange and yellow, until they turned into a vast approximation of a sunset on fire.
“Look, it’s a volcano!” she yelled.
“Are you learning about volcanoes in school?” Elijah said as he diligently traced circles across the edges. Art had never been his particular talent, that was left to Niklaus.
“Yes,” Hope said, jumping up and down. “They explode.”
They kept drawing, and Hope explained every single one of her designs (“That’s a flower”; “that’s a man wearing an umbrella;” “that’s a badger”) though to Elijah’s untrained eye, they all looked like splatter-painted puddles.
He watched Hope, the way she carefully traced every line and the way she mixed paint with ease, and remembered the way Niklaus used to draw. He would sketch in the woods whenever he wanted to get away from Mikael, and paint elaborate landscapes as they traveled across Europe, and had on more than one occasion tricked artists into training him. And now his daughter is becoming an artist, too.
Elijah was endlessly protective of Hope. She was his niece, their pride and joy, the reason they were fighting to protect their family. But his relationship with Hayley made things complicated -- how much of a father could her be to her? What was his role in the family? Would he always be the uncle in love with Hope’s mother, while her parents stayed platonic for everyone’s sakes?
“That’s a hippopotamus,” Hope announced, pointing at her latest spectacle: blue paint thrown haphazardly across the paper.
“It’s beautiful,” Elijah said, and for all his distaste of modern art, he had to admit it was.
***
Marcel saw Hope, and saw a younger version of himself.
That little girl: smiling and eager and happy, that had been Marcel once. Marcellus, Niklaus had told him, you will be incredible. Hope’s eagerness, her joy around her father, the way she looks up to him: that was Marcel, before.
Before he and Rebekah stumbled into a disastrous courtship. Before Marcel realized that Klaus didn’t love him, that he was instead molding him into something to be used. Before he became a vampire, before New Orleans, before he was king, before he trapped the Mikaelsons away.
Marcel had loved Niklaus. He still loved him, but not in the adoring way all children love their parents during childhood, before the marrow is stripped away and the truths are revealed.
Klaus would ruin this child, too, Marcel knew. There was no way anyone could live with the Mikaelsons and make it out alive: they ruined everything they touched. Cami, poisoned. Davina, cast into hell. Josh, who lost the love of his life. The dead bodies they left scattered behind, the remains of Lucien’s body beneath the sea. The Mikaelsons molded people into what they wanted, and then destroyed.
Hope, that girl was a martyr. That girl was Klaus putting all his dreams, all his hopes of changing the world and giving that girl a future, into a baby. That girl was going to either be a hero… or the destruction of her entire family.
Marcel wanted to warn her. Wanted to tell her, this was me once. Look what happened to me. But she was young, and so sweet, and called him her best friend. She said, “Marcel, are we safe?” and he didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.
He said yes.
Maybe Hope would have a better ending than he did. Maybe she would be okay growing up in a family of sociopathic murderers. But Marcel knew: nature versus nurture is true, and it’s just as likely that this girl could use her powers to bring the end of the world rather than to save it.
She was a Mikaelson, after all, and they did love to destroy things.
***
“For our first lesson,” Freya said, gesturing at the table, “we’ll be focusing on transfiguration.”
Hope crossed her arms. She had just turned thirteen, and was in that awkward stage of life all teenagers are: long legs, pimpled face, a body that is growing at a rate faster than her brain. She’d become more sullen lately, more easily irritated, which had led Klaus to make jokes about “raising supernatural teenagers.”
But now that she was thirteen, Freya had decided it was time Hope learned magic. After all, she was even younger than Hope when she first learned, and if they had any hope of survival they needed to pass down the Mikaelson studies.
“When will I have to use magic?”
Freya thought about younger Hope, sending flames across a room. That girl seemed a world away from this sullen teenager.
“To protect yourself,” Freya said. “To protect your family.” She bit down on her tongue. Those were the same words Dahlia had told her so many years ago: “You need to protect yourself, Freya. You need to protect her family.” She had never forgotten. It was the first lesson Dahlia taught her. The second lesson was how to destroy herself. The third lesson was sacrifice.
“Always and forever,” Hope said with a (minor) eye roll. Freya resisted the urge to laugh. They were going to have their hands full with a half-vampire, half-werewolf teenage girl.
“Yes,” Freya said. “Why don’t you try?” She handed Hope a small feather, dusted blue. “Try transfiguring this into a larger feather. You remember the spell, correct?”
“Yes,” Hope said. She took the feather and looked engaged for the first time this entire lesson. Freya watched her niece, who still looked so young and innocent but was becoming an adult. They all wanted to hold onto their innocence as long as they could, because every Mikaelson had lost their innocence too young.
Dahlia’s lessons ended with screams and shattered bones and blood. Freya wanted to give Hope something better.
The two of them chanted the spell, which was an ancient chant Freya had found buried in one of the libraries, covered in dust and barely readable. “Let me tell you a story,” they said in unison, “of a witch who could control the rain and the wind and the sea.”
As Hope said, “the sea,” the feather fluttered a few inches in the air. Hope watched it with wide open eyes, and Freya thought: we haven’t taken away all your optimism yet . The feather grew and grew and grew, until it had expanded into the size of Hope’s hand. Then it drifted back towards the ground and she caught it, breathlessly, into her palms.
“I did it,” Hope said with a beaming smile.
For the first time, Freya understood Dahlia’s lessons. Because she wanted to keep that smile on Hope’s face forever.
***
Vincent hated having meetings with Mikaelsons. They either ended in fucking chaos or some kind of new threat. Those idiots had more enemies than they could count, and they certainly didn’t try to prevent new ones from emerging.
But this is Vincent’s city, and he needed to keep it safe, even if that ended up working with a bunch of sociopathic idiots who are all convinced they run the world. The Mikaelsons and their egos, honestly.
You got used to it, eventually. Didn’t mean he trusted them or liked them. There was a knock on the door, and Vincent sighed.
“Hope?”
The door swung open, and there was Hope Mikaelson: child prodigy, bastard daughter, and a newly appointed leader in the Quarter. It had been decided now that she was eighteen and an adult, she could take on more leadership roles. After all her blood literally connected the supernatural communities. Vincent had agreed, and now he and Hope had weekly meetings to discuss the issues happening in New Orleans.
Hope sat down at his desk, her floral dress twirling. She looked older, down to the dress and the eyeliner and her poise, but Vincent would always see her as that little girl wandering the Quarter. How quickly time passes. How quickly they all grow older. It feels like five years ago he married Eva, and now Klaus Mikaelson’s daughter is grown-up.
“How was your weekend?” Hope asks, taking a folder out of her bag. This was their weekly routine. Vincent nodded and said, “Fine.”
“I’d hope it bloody was,” Hope said. Vincent stifled the urge to laugh, or tell her how much she sounded like Klaus.
“Let’s get down to buisness,” Hope said. “I’ve heard from several of my sources that hunters have been seen in the bayou recently.”
“Which type of hunters?” Vincent took out a pen and began scribbling down notes.
“Commercial hunters, looking for wolves. Wolf hunting hasn’t been outlawed in Louisiana, and it’s hunting season.” Hope danced her fingers across the desk. “We need strong action here.”
“Should we send in a security team?”
“That will cause too much of a fuss.”
“Relocate all the wolves to a secure location?” Vincent suggested.
Hope shook her head. “Too expensive.”
“We could track the wolves,” he said.
“There’s been problems with that. Mama told me about how the hunters tried to track wolves once, and that ended with issues on the full moon.”
“You know your history,” Vincent said.
Hope stared at him, a pure Hayley move, and nodded. “Of course I do.” Those Mikaelsons and their egos.
“Do you happen to have any ideas?”
“Yes, I do,” Hope said. (Again Vincent resisted the urge to smile at her eagerness or roll his eyes at the same time.) “I think we should work to get wolves on the endangered species list. I have a contact”--
“You have a contact,” Vincent said.
Hope pulled a Post-It out of her bag and set on the table. A number was written in Sharpie. “I have my resources,” she said with a smile.
“I’ll call them,” Vincent said, taking the pink note and failing to pretend he wasn’t impressed. The rest of the meeting went by quickly -- they discussed the usual blood feuds, issues with the vampire control, issues with a resurgence of radical witches -- and managed to dream up some solutions.
Hope said, “Thank you, Vincent.” She stood up, and how quickly time passes. How quickly children grow up.
“Of course,” Vincent said. “Tell your family to stop being a pain in my ass.”
Hope laughed. “They won’t.”
As he watched her leave, Vincent thought: she is the best of the Mikaelsons .
***
Hayley didn’t want to have a baby. She didn’t want to screw up this poor child. Let alone have a kid with Klaus. What the fuck had she been thinking? They were drunk, sure, but it wasn’t like she wanted one drunk one-night stand to literally ruin the rest of her life.
It wasn’t like Hayley had any fucking good parental role models. They were dead, and she’d been bounced around from foster home to foster home her whole life before she finally aged out of the system and learned to live on the streets. It wasn’t like Klaus had role models, either, what with the dead mom and the incest siblings and the fact that he’d murdered his own father.
Parents of the Year, they would be. This child would grow up to be so fucked. Probably need lots of therapy. Drugs. Probably grow up to hate her parents.
But Hayley didn’t want to give up this child either. It wasn’t like she’d ever done anything good in her life. This was a chance for a better future. A chance to do something good for the world, raise a child.
And so as her belly grew, Hayley dreamed. She thought of names. Zoe. Kaitlyn. Angela. Margaret. She thought about her parents, and what her mother thought while she was pregnant with her own baby.
She was terrified, for the normal reasons -- will I be a good mother? Will I be able to give this child a good life? Will I ruin this baby?
And for not-so normal reasons: will this baby always be in danger? Will this baby be ostracized because of her superpowers? What if her unborn child couldn’t control her powers? Then the baby would be a threat.
Hayley made promises. I promise to always love you. I promise to always protect you. I promise to always fight for you. I promise that I will keep you safe. I promise that I will be a good mother for you.
This baby is her future, and a promise, and a celebration. This wasn’t how she wanted her life to end. But Hayley will protect her daughter at all costs.
When Hayley saw Hope for the first time, she cried and thought to herself: Always and forever.
***
Klaus watched his daughter play, and thought:
I will give you a better childhood than I ever had, my darling Hope.