Work Text:
In Rebekah’s long, long life, she has seen many things. Some have called it a privilege, to be able to see the rise and fall of empires, to know forgotten languages and to truly experience eras for herself, but her reply would always be that she would give it all up in a heartbeat for a human existence:
To live a mortal lifespan, and to grow old with someone. To have children who look like her, and little grandchildren to slip food into and buy clothing for.
She has seen villains fall in love, and heroes fall from grace. She thought nothing could surprise her anymore after seeing Klaus get what was denied to all of them; a child of his own, which mended their family, and brought them all together once again.
She should have known better. Once again, she finds herself surprised, in the waiting room of the hospital, surrounded by the scent of bleach, blood and get well flowers; picked up by her superior senses. Superior to humans, anyway; her brother’s senses are even better than hers, and she can only wonder what they tell him.
Though Klaus doesn’t look like anything of the sort is on his mind. He is standing, then sitting, then pacing around with his fingers running through his hair, which is just long enough to curl. He looks, in short, like a mess.
Rebekah walks over to him. He watches her do it with unfocused eyes, watches as she sits down, the thin padded seat digging at her backbone. He breathes out a heavy sigh, and slumps in the seat next to her.
“She’s doing well,” Rebekah says, redundantly, because he can hear the proceedings as well as she can. “Relax, brother.”
“I know that,” Klaus says, quietly, voice still laden with anxiety. “But I just can’t help—“ He hisses, a sharp intake of breath.
“This isn’t the same as with Hayley,” she says. “We’re in a hospital, not a church. There’s no one here hellbent on sacrificing a baby. Breathe.”
“It—“ He sighs. “It isn’t just that,” he admits, and she knows that he wouldn’t have, long ago. It would be as good as an admittance of weakness, and we are not weak, she has remembered those words by heart from childhood, spat out as they were by Mikeal himself.
Some things are just ingrained, and they won’t go away, even after a thousand years. It’s why, when Klaus gets caught making a mess when painting with Hope, he’ll still get that flash of fear in his eyes, the ghost of Mikeal an unwelcome prescence in the room; this angry, spiteful thing.
It’s why he’s afraid now, hand clutching the chair grip, bending it slightly out of shape with his strength. They are children of the eleventh century. And while they had a mother who survived it seven times over, their mother had a magical nature, and it wasn’t the norm; childbirth was at lethal as the wolves they shared their home with.
“Get out of your head and look around,” Rebekah says, gesturing at the hospital, with its antisceptic smell and terrible coffee. A far cry from a hovel in a forest village. “Your baby is going to be just fine. And when she’s done, she’ll have a baby of her own.”
“She grew up so fast,” he says, and then he winces, no doubt at how horifically cliche it all is. But it’s alright. You see, they never thought they’d have this. They spent a millenium believing they were the last of their generation, and they were wrong. He had a baby, and that baby grew up. And it all happened so fast, like the rest of their immortal existence, except this is something that they would actually want to last forever.
It’s been so long since that moment when they woke up with blood on their clothes, Mikael arriving with some poor village girl and telling them to feed. The man sitting before her now has been a king and a villain and a father, and everything in between. But underneath the fluorescent lights, hunched over and frightened, he looks less like a man, and more like the boy their father never allowed him to be.
“Do you remember when Henrik was born?”
The name falls clumsily from her lips; they do not speak it often. Part of her regrets immediately, but then, this is a special occasion, isn’t it? If not now, when?
“Of course,” Klaus says, roughly.
“I was…fairly young,” Rebekah says, “but I remember how excited you were. You had already carved a wooden toy for him in anticipation, do you remember that?”
He nods, and he doesn’t look at her. Perhaps it is cruel, to dig up these old wounds—he always felt Henrik’s death more deeply, believing himself to be the one at fault for it, even though she never blamed him; none of them did. It had been an accident. A terrible accident. She never resented him for his role in bringing said accident about.
But she never voiced that either.
“I told Hope about him,” Klaus says, eyes still trained on the floor. “I thought… She should know her uncle.”
“He deserves to be known,” she agrees softly.
A thousand years without speaking of Henrik with her siblings, it has caused the memory of him to fade. She can call his face to her mind, but it is a mirage, and it is fleeting. But she could never forget those sunlit afternoons, playing on the slippery rock by the waterfall, laughing as they inevitably fell, startling the birds even with the roar of the water. She could never forget asking him to pick the sweet flowers perfuming the air and to braid them into her hair, and how he complied without hesitation.
She wonders what Klaus told Hope. Which memories of his own he would have shared. She wants to ask…but perhaps another day, she decides. Baby steps, right? The notion fills her with amusement, given their current situation, waiting for a new baby to be born. To slip food into and buy clothing for. One day, Rebekah will take the cure, and she will have this for herself. But for now?
“We’re going to spoil your grandchild rotten, you and I,” she says, and Klaus finally chuckles. It’s a raspy sound.
She slings an arm over his shoulder.
A few hours later, they’re all in Hope’s hospital room, to meet the latest addition to their family. The room is quiet, save for the steady beeps of the monitor in the corner, and the baby.
The baby is a boy, and he’s swaddled in thick blankets, and he is loved.
“Henrik,” Hope breathes, tired but happy, and full of awe for her baby in a way that is reminiscent of her father, years ago.
And Rebekah tears up. Distantly, she notices that she is not the only one.
Henrik, with his radiant smile, and his long, dark hair; quiet and kind; who wanted to be just like Niklaus, as he had been once upon a time, the sweet boy who loved art and music. Henrik would have followed him anywhere. Henrik did.
If not for Henrik’s death, Klaus would not have met Hayley, and Hope would not exist. It’s an awful thought, but it’s true nonetheless, and Hope seems to be honoring it this way; honoring the uncle she never got to meet. The uncle she could never meet, as it contradicts her entire existence.
At their tears, Hope chuckles in exhaustion.
Klaus looks at the child with reverence, and then Klaus leans forward to kiss Hope’s forehead.
“You did it, sweetheart,” he says so softly, it would be inaudible to Rebekah if not for her superior senses. Rebekah smiles.