Archive of Our Own

“You will be pleased to know that Finn is no longer a problem. However, there are other dangers on the horizon. My father is on the loose. I need you to use your pack to find him.”

“No. We already lost one of ours today, a good man. I won’t let any more wolves die.”

“Mikael is a threat to our child!”

“Mikael is a threat to you. The pack will protect Hope if he comes, but I’m not gonna let you use them to settle old scores.”

(The Originals, 2x15: They All Asked For You)

Seeing Mikael in Hope’s nursery brings Klaus one of the worst feelings he has ever experienced in his long, long life. 

Mikael glances at him—their gazes catching, locked for one terrible moment—before he’s gone in a flash. Klaus staggers in place. 

He expected Mikael to try and hurt Hope in front of him, or for Mikael to put her down to finish him off first. This is different, but no less terrifying—and enraging. 

Klaus is fast. He’s grabbed the white oak stake he needs in a blur, leaving the compound just as fast, trailing Mikael’s scent while it is still fresh and he, too, is moving so vampirically fast. There aren’t many thoughts in Klaus’s mind, beyond the constant stream of save Hope save Hope save Hope, as erratic as his heartbeat.

When he does find Mikael, in St. Anne’s church, the Viking is not alone. 

“I’ve come to bargain for my Freya, witch. You may have the vermin’s spawn in exchange for her freedom.”

Aside from them, the chapel is empty; unlit save for the rack of candles in one corner. Three lit votives cast a red glow onto the wall. The woman Mikael speaks to has long dark hair and she gazes at him the way one would at a bug that has suddenly become literate. A strange mixture of amusement and derision; a detached sort of fascination. 

Not that Klaus spares her more than a single glance before he’s stepping forward, white-knuckled grip around the stake that can kill Mikael a second time, but it can’t kill this woman. It can’t kill this witch, who can only be Dahlia herself.

Still, Klaus says. “I think not.”

Still, he holds his head high in defiance, as he looks between Mikael and Dahlia and ponders how to get out of this impossible situation with Hope unharmed. 

“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” he drawls, pretending Mikael can’t hear the thundering of his heart. “You’re really making a deal with the woman who took your beloved daughter from you?”

Klaus’s own beloved daughter squirms in Mikael’s tight grip. Klaus wants to rip her out of Mikael’s arms and then rip off Mikael’s arms for good measure. It takes every ounce of self-control he has not to pounce, not knowing how Dahlia will react, but he knows enough to guess. He knows enough to be wary of the woman who has more power than the one who created the vampire species.

She says, conversationally, “I’m surprised, too, to be honest, Niklaus.”

“I have no interest in your thoughts,” he snaps, before snarling at Mikael, “You will give her back to me or I will make everything you ever did to me look like child’s play!”

Mikael, predictably, does not look cowed at the threat. He opens his mouth, and Klaus can already guess what kind of disparaging remark will come out of it; Klaus already knows that despite everything, it will still manage to make him feel smaller. But Dahlia speaks before Mikael does.

“Your love for your daughter is clear to me in the way you would fight for her. An admirable quality, my nephew.” She still sounds so distantly fascinated. And then she sighs, wistful. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. No brutish Viking blood in those veins...”

Hope begins to cry.

”Enough!”

All thoughts of logic and strategy are abandoned as impulse has Klaus rushing forward. Only for Dahlia to wave her hand. 

Everything goes dark.

(“Well?”

”Well, husband of my sister... This child was already owed to me, so she’s hardly a bargaining chip. But you did save me the trouble of having to procure her myself, and to be honest, I’ve grown tired of Freya. We have a deal. If—you will help me with one last task.”

“And what task is that?”

“One you’ll like. See, my mistake before was taking Freya from you, leading to her... issues. Niklaus must be a father to Hope, but he will not want to comply with me at first. He will try to take her from me, foolishly. Making him compliant is a task I leave to you.”

“Alright, witch. We have ourselves a deal.”

“Splendid. Let’s get started then, shall we?”)

Hayley enjoys watching Hope in her crib. 

She knows Klaus does as well, but remembering the last time she ran into him in the nursery—

He’d been smiling at Hope, in that soft way that Hope is often the recipient of, and something about the sight had Hayley telling him Jackson was to thank for the quiet. It’s not like it wasn’t true; Hope had been crying before and Jackson had soothed her. Before they left the nursery to talk, she watched Klaus give Hope that sweet smile again. Hayley had looked away from it, exiting the nursery. Klaus followed soon after.

And then he told her Finn was dealt with. He told her Mikael was loose. The conversation had only derailed from there. 

Remembering the way that he had threatened the pack if Hayley refused to utilize them to find Mikael still makes her bristle with rage, and so she hopes that she’ll find the nursery empty of anyone but Hope. No Klaus. No Elijah either, or even Rebekah. No Mikealsons. No walking, talking reminder of Dahlia and every other Mikealson enemy that haunts the poor innocent soul of her baby.

Careful what you wish for, Elijah tends to say. The words ring through Hayley’s mind as she finds the nursery empty of all Mikealsons.

Including Hope.

For a moment, all Hayley does is stare. Then the panic sets in.

There’s a knife, embedded in the wood of the crib. 

This is no accident; this is no case of one from the compound having decided to hold Hope without letting Hayley know. Still, she hopes she’s wrong, and becomes a whirlwind of searching every nook and cranny of the compound; calling out desperately for her daughter. It attracts more than a little attention, and inspires others to search as well, but Hope is nowhere to be found.

Hayley returns to the nursery with despair in her heart, as if Hope will magically appear in it now that she’s checking a second time. The crib is still empty and Elijah is inspecting the knife.

“The carving in the hilt is unmistakable,” he mutters, his back to her. “This was the work of Mikael.”

Hayley’s heart jumps into her throat.

Elijah turns, abruptly. He’s not looking at her, but then, she’s barely looking at him; the edges of her vision going hazy. She might be sick. 

“Elijah, where are you going?”

“Niklaus? Niklaus!”

Hayley follows him out of that empty nursery, unable to stand being in it anymore; as Elijah calls out for his brother. Klaus has supersenses unlike anyone in the compound. If he was here, he would have heard Elijah already. Still, Elijah keeps calling, and once again, bystanders get a clue and join the search. A short-lived one, once more.

Hayley gets out her phone with shaking hands. Taps on her contact list. Then Klaus’s name. That name that inspires so much fear in thousands of vampires looks so innocuous on her screen; one of her most frequently called numbers, as her trembling finger presses the call button once more and she holds the phone to her ear.

Her heart jumps when she hears his voice. The first feeling that goes through her is relief. Then she realizes she’s listening to his voicemail message, and her stomach drops.

“He’s not answering,” she says, reduntantly, to Elijah, knowing he could hear the other end. Her voice is quietly horrified. 

Rebekah joins them—Hayley’s still getting used to her new body, still has to take a second to catalogue this face as Rebekah’s face, but that grim expression would look the same no matter what body she were to be in.

“The white oak stake is missing,” Rebekah announces.

And just like that, things get even worse.

Rebekah calls Marcel and asks him to come here; tells him to bring Davina, too. 

“Last I heard of Mikael,” Rebekah says, after hanging up, “it was when Esther was performing that body swap spell on me. She told Klaus, Kol and myself that she’d made a deal with him. Mikael helped her break Finn free and in exchange Esther gave him the right to kill Niklaus. She sold Nik to him. She was going to deliver the stake to Mikael herself, but then both of them were dessicated and channeled by Finn.”

“And now that Freya has woken Mikael, I doubt the presence of her is enough for him to have given up on his—plight,” Elijah finishes, the last word in particular coming out as if he’s bitten into something particularly sour.

Mikael is a threat to you.

The words are an endless, cruel echo in Hayley’s head while they wait in the courtyard. Jackson is by her side, a comforting presence, taking her hand in his, but it isn’t enough to drown out the overwhelming despair. By the time Marcel and Davina join them, she can’t take it anymore.

“This is my fault,” she whispers. “Klaus told me Mikael was on the loose and he asked my help to track him down—to stop him with the pack before he could surprise us. But I said Mikael was only a threat to him, not to Hope, and I refused to consider it, and now they’re both gone and I—”

“Hey,” soothes Jackson. A squeeze of her hand. “This is not your fault.”

“Actually, it is,” Davina says, with the kind of tone she usually reserves for Klaus. This time, her glare is directed Hayley’s way. “Yeah, Mikael’s a threat to Klaus, and everyone in his sire line. How could you have been so cavalier about that?”

Hayley’s about to apologize, and Jackson shifts beside her, probably to defend her again, and she sees Marcel opening his mouth—to chastise Davina or to agree with her, Hayley doesn’t know. She doesn’t find out, because Elijah speaks before any of them.

“Or about the threat of Mikael to Hope.” Elijah’s stare has her pinned in place. Hearing Hope’s name makes her want to cry. “Don’t you remember when he tried to kill you both?”

There is no saving that atrocity festering in your womb. Better it dies now, and you along with it!

Her eyes close. “Mikael literally told me he wanted Hope to die,” she whispers. She opens her eyes and sees Elijah looking at her like he has never seen her before.

“Mikael has always hated Niklaus’s nature and has mercilessly hunted him for it—Niklaus passed this nature on to Hope. Of course Mikael would be a threat to her. You knew this.”

And Hayley snaps.

“Well maybe I wanted to forget! About all of Klaus’s family who are always coming after my daughter—his mother, his father-who-isn’t-really, his brother, his aunt, it never ends! Maybe I just wanted my daughter to have a normal life, away from all of you Mikealsons.” 

She realizes that somewhere in her tirade she’s stood up. She still stands, panting, with the words that have escaped her. The words that have been building up for a while. 

Since—the prospect of marrying Jackson, she thinks. Since the idea of another option opened up to her. Life with a good man, who has no murderous parents, no thousand years of violence following him around like a shroud. Simple and uncomplicated love. Simple and uncomplicated family. And she wanted that for Hope. More than the alternative.

More that this alternative.

Yet, now, looking at Elijah’s heartbroken face, suddenly it doesn’t seem so appealing anymore. 

“How could you say that?” Elijah says, quietly. Voice breaking slightly. “She is our family, too. We love her. You used to make such a fuss about Niklaus not taking her from you, and he didn’t, but now you speak as if you want to do it to him. When did you become such a hypocrite?”

The memory hits Hayley like a sledgehammer. If you try to take her from me, I swear—

Klaus had cut her off, asked her to come with him; he wanted to show her something. And he showed her the nursery he had built. Our daughter should be raised by her parents.

It had been right after Mikael had tried to kill her, and Hope, still inside her. And now Mikael has taken Hope, and Hayley—has been turned into a liar. My daughter has an advantage Klaus never had. She will never, ever know you.

She thought she felt horrible sending Hope away with Rebekah before. It doesn’t compare to what she’s feeling right now.

“Okay, all of you, lay off her,” says Jackson. “Elijah, you knew Mikael was loose too and you didn’t exactly do anything, either. And let’s not forget, Davina, that you were the one to bring Mikael back in the first place. I mean, speaking of hypocrisy.”

For a moment, it’s tempting to let Jackson defend her—to believe everything he’s trying to say and internalize it for herself. The way that she’s been doing, since before the wedding. Jackson is the reason she’s been distancing herself from the Mikealsons more and more. The reason she didn’t see Mikael as a priority despite having experienced his cruelty firsthand. She wanted to choose Jackson and by extension his pack over the Mikealsons. And now look.

“No,” Hayley says. “They’re right. I should have taken Klaus seriously. I may not want Hope to be a Mikealson but that doesn’t change the fact that she is. Of course Mikael would come after her. He has before.”

Hayley thinks of the moment, early in the pregnancy, when she’d bought a vial of wolfsbane. A small dose. Enough for an abortion. She wanted to do it, then. She wanted nothing to do with the Mikealson family. Yet... She didn’t go through with it. 

Klaus asked her why, the morning afterwards. What stopped you? You could have been free of all this. Of me.

Hope is a Mikealson. Hayley has known that from the beginning. 

She looks from Elijah’s betrayal-filled face to Rebekah, whose expression is a mixture of resigned acceptance and twisted understanding, and she feels awful. Klaus’s absence is a big, glaring neon sign in the room. 

“Alright, come on,” says Marcel, “I’m still alive so Klaus is too. We’re gonna assume so is Hope. D, can you find them?”

Davina looks a little shaken from the argument that she just witnessed unfold—but when Marcel turns to her, she nods, resolutely. 

Hayley feels a burst of panic upon realizing the time they just wasted. The thought of Hope being stuck with Mikael makes her wants to scream. Instead, she just watches as the vampires in the room gather the ingredients for the locator spell in a flash.

It isn’t just Hope that she feels worried for.

Settle old scores, Hayley had said to Klaus, as if they’d been talking about someone like Tyler, not—not the vengeful hunter who’s been chasing Klaus for a thousand years for the sole purpose of killing him, who has only ever stopped trying to do so when dessicated or dead. If Klaus dies she knows she’ll never forgive herself and her gaze is almost unconsciously drawn back to Marcel, still upright and breathing. Hayley tries to breathe, too.

And then the map Davina was chanting over catches fire.

“I’m being blocked,” Davina declares after the fire is put out. “It’s powerful magic—I’ve never felt anything like it before.” She turns wide eyes on Marcel. “It’s even stronger than I was when I had the power of all the harvest girls. I can’t find them.”

Marcel puts a comforting hand on Davina’s shoulder. As Hayley is reminded of how young Davina is, really, Hope’s face flashes in her mind once more. Making her heart squeeze, painfully.

“So Mikael’s using a witch,” Jackson summarizes.

“No.”

They all look at Elijah, who is looking at the burnt map.

“A witch is using Mikael,” he realizes. “Dahlia.”

The name shocks through Hayley’s system. ”Dahlia?”

“Think about it,” says Elijah. For all the world, he seems calm, but Hayley knows him well enough to recognize his tells. The way he bites out his words, the rigid posture. “Mikael loves Freya, he wants her freedom. Dahlia wants Hope. There’s a deal to be made there.”

Just like that, the nightmare Hayley has been dreading since she first heard Dahlia’s name has been made manifest. “So Dahlia has Hope?!”

“I’m not sure how Niklaus fits in,” continues Elijah, walking away from the map in a pace. “Probably, Dahlia will allow Mikael to kill him any moment now, so as to remove one of her enemies. Which means we have to move quickly to find them.”

“I can’t,” Davina says, firmly and regretfully at the same time. “Dahlia is incredibly powerful. It would take incredible power of our own. Maybe... If I could work with Freya? And if we could channel at least one Original... I think that could work.”

Rebekah says, “Only one way to find out.”

While they’re waiting for Freya, many sympathetic looks are cast Hayley’s way. 

It makes her want to claw those expressions off their faces. She knows they mean well. It’s just that good old werewolf temper rearing its head, made a thousand times worse by the loss of her daughter. Not permanent loss, she tells herself firmly. She refuses to even entertain the alternative lest she really break. And she can’t afford to break.

Realistically, she knows that if Dahlia really does have Hope, it means Hope is safe. Dahlia needs Hope; she isn’t like Mikael, who would kill Hope simply for being Klaus’s child; for the crime of existing. It should mean that Hayley can breathe a little easier, it means they have time to do it right, get Hope away from that witch, but Hayley can’t breathe easier. Because Dahlia has no reason whatsoever not to hurt Klaus. And Mikael is still involved. 

Elijah’s grim scenario earlier is the most likely one, and they all know it. Hayley’s not the only one who keeps getting looks. Everyone stares at Marcel as if he’ll keel over and die any second now.

Freya arrives and gets the summary of what has happened, and what they want her to do. Hayley’s heart pounds faster, as they’ll finally be able to come into action, and, “No.”

In the silence that follows, Freya stubbornly sets her jaw.

“We must take Dahlia down first, before we do anything else,” she insists. “Her retaliation would be swift, otherwise.”

“Convenient that this is your priority, Freya, isn’t it?” Elijah muses pleasantly. Rebekah gives him a chastising look, but she doesn’t speak up in defense of Freya, who sighs harshly in frustration.

“I know you don’t know me very well, but I know Dahlia. Look, if they were going to kill Klaus, he’d be dead already. He’s not, as Marcel proves.”

“This is Mikael we’re talking about,” snaps Elijah. “You knew him for five years, after which, by all accounts, he changed for the worse. And I’ve known him in that state for a thousand. Niklaus’s death is only a matter of time.”

They’re wasting time again, Hayley thinks, feeling distant from her own body. Helpless to do anything but watch.

Klaus once told her painting is like a metaphor for control to him. She watched Klaus paint once. As he worked, she could only ever see corners of the painting, partial glimpses of the areas of canvas not obscured by his body. When the sun would move across the sky, Klaus would move with it: turning the easel to catch the light. Klaus was so attentive and calm, his mouth a firm line as his eyes were focused and sharp, crystalline in the bright sunlight. In contrast, his painting had been of the full moon, plump and bright. He strategizes while he paints.

Hayley wishes she could quiet the screaming in her head to do some strategizing of her own.

And then Freya asks, “What will you do once you find them?”

“Whatever it takes to get Niklaus away from the one that threatens his life—and the lives of his sire line.” Elijah tacks the last bit on like an afterthought, nodding at Marcel, who gives a sarcastic little smile. 

“One thing we know for certain is that Dahlia will not harm Hope, giving us more time for that rescue. Niklaus has to come first,” says Elijah, voicing Hayley’s own thoughts. It still doesn’t feel great, hearing it out loud that her daughter is not going to be the priority, but Hayley fights down that werewolf temper wanting to rear its head and lash out. She knows Elijah is right.

”The one that threatens his life is still our father.” Freya’s smile is humorless, her eyes wide, as she asks, “How exactly do you intend to deal with him?”

“I will do,” Elijah repeats, slowly, with a dangerous smile, “whatever it takes.”

Freya’s shaking her head. “You need to promise me that you will spare Father’s life.”

“I have no idea what we’ll be walking into,” Elijah says, still smiling. His eyes narrow. “That is a promise I cannot make.”

Freya’s smiling too; more wild, less controlled. “Then my help is something I cannot give.”

And Hayley has had just about enough of this.

“Wrong answer,” she growls, stepping forward.

“Okay, okay, hold on.”

She stops, turning her glare on Marcel. Unperturbed, he continues,

“If Mikael cares so much about Freya, could she not talk him down? No bloodshed required?”

Freya’s eyes widen slightly, and then she turns to Elijah, relieved. “Yes,” she says, “I can do that.”

“There’s no guarantee it will work,” Elijah says, still with all the grace of a predator contemplating its next kill. Hayley herself is fantasizing about ripping off Mikael’s head.

“You have to at least let me try,” Freya insists, and Hayley feels a burst of resentment that she fights hard to push back down. It’s not Freya who she’s really angry at, anyway.

It’s herself.

“Very well,” Elijah says, slowly. “I give you my word that I will let you try. But if it doesn’t go your way...”

“It will,” Freya says, confidently.

“Fantastic. Can we get on with it now?” says Rebekah, voicing what everyone else in the room is thinking.

As it turns out, they cannot get on with it. Doing a locator spell that bypasses Dahlia’s defenses is tricky business. And in the end, it takes an entire week for Freya to be successful. Seven torturous days during which Hayley barely takes her eyes off Marcel.

During the last day, he joins her where she’s sitting, nodding at Jackson who’s by her other side.

“Can I ask you something?” At her silence, Marcel continues, undeterred, “Why didn’t you dispatch those wolves to go find Mikael?”

”Those wolves are our pack,” Jackson says, glaring. “Hayley just wanted to keep them safe. It’s not her fault Mikael managed to sneak past them.”

“They were meant to be an army,” says Marcel, voice even. He doesn’t even look at Jackson, gaze focused solely on Hayley. “Soldiers are willing to die for their cause. A leader has to accept this and send them out to battle.”

Hayley flinches, and she barely hears Jackson berating Marcel that now’s not the time for a leader speech, because her mind is replaying every single I knew you were tough, I knew you were cunning, but I never knew you were a queen. 

The wolves need a leader. You are their queen.

You see, there’s your queen. Powerful, fearless, and unlike me, merciful.

Golden curls, stormy blue eyes. Sharp cheekbones, soft and full lips.

Hayley clamps down the sound that wants to escape her. She can’t lose Klaus. That feeling is as startling as it is all-encompassing. What if...

“I’ve found him,” Freya declares.

Twisting the ring on her hand, Hayley looks at the map that has not caught fire this time. Rebekah’s old body lies dessicated at her feet, forehead carved into with Tunde’s knife. Davina is panting with exertion. Hayley draws closer, seeing Klaus’s location for herself.

Abandoned stables, located in the middle of nowhere. There are no living creatures around for miles: wether because of compulsion, Dahlia’s magic, or some other reason. It doesn’t really matter. Their rescue party of three heads inside—Hayley braces herself—and—

Her first thought is that Freya’s magic failed. That Dahlia must have tricked them, been one step ahead. Because there’s no one here. 

The white-hot rage at the time they wasted is too overwhelming. The nearest wall cracks with Hayley’s fist. Tears escape her, afterwards. 

“Hayley,” says Elijah, quietly.

She turns to look at him, defensive, ready to pounce at the first hint of hostility, but he’s not looking at her at all. His gaze is focused past her, on the ground, with some kind of fascination, slowly turning more and more horrified. Hayley turns in that direction, impatient, casting her eyes downwards as Elijah has. 

There’s a cage on the floor.

And inside it—

“Oh my god,” she breathes, seeing Klaus. Crouched low and watching them with golden eyes, from under long lashes. 

There was a hunter once, who nearly trapped Hayley. Still early in her curse, her wolf had massacred sheep and goats; pounced on the boy looking after those animals; ate up an old woman who lived by herself halfway up the mountain. The hunter had tracked her, had set a trap for her. When she was in it, the moon slowly left her, and the hunter had been a regular hunter, not one clued in about the supernatural. He had taken off running, forgetting his rifle. She doesn’t know how long she was stuck there, until an unassuming couple had stumbled upon a naked girl in a wolf trap and promptly helped her. 

The cage Klaus is in is different. No wonder Hayley missed it, it barely comes up higher than her knee. Even now, it’s difficult to see Klaus through the ceiling of the cage, because it’s just that low. 

Hayley barely notices Elijah drop to his knees beside her, barely notices herself drop too; when Klaus’s eyes meet hers she flinches back. They’re still shining gold. He doesn’t change them back. 

She thinks that he can’t change them back, taking in the sparse bits of coarse, light-colored fur running down the lengths of his arms; on his bare skin, but his tattoos are still visible underneath. His fingernails are gone, replaced with wicked claws. Some of the fur has affected his ears, too, which are pointed. Wolf-like.

She thinks if they could see his mouth, they’d see fangs, but they can’t, because there’s a muzzle. Obviously altered to fit him, covering the lower part of his face, dirty leather straps and clasps.

He looks like he got caught in-between the transformation, like he got stuck there. 

He looks like a hybrid. In the full sense of the word.

Not all human-looking, not all wolf. A different species entirely. Hayley’s species, and her own wolf wants to howl at this sight, and that instinct surprises her. That she would still see Klaus as pack, after all her distancing, after drawing the lines, the Mikealsons on one side and Jackson and his—their—pack on the other. But here is Klaus, in a cage that forces him to be constantly curled in on himself, the low ceiling forcing him low to the ground, and Hayley wants to break Mikael beneath her own claws.

Crouched as Klaus is right now, on his hands and knees, his hair is already brushing the ceiling bars. He can’t even sit up.

Freya makes a noise, something that sounds like a gag and a choke all at once. Hayley takes the excuse to look away, but the sight has already been burned into her mind. Freya looks at Klaus, open-mouthed, and Klaus looks back, not open-mouthed, because he can’t open his mouth. But his eyes are very wide. Like he’s surprised to see them.

A terrible silence has befallen them, Elijah and Freya and Hayley, their bodies frozen in place at what they’ve found. Until Klaus begins to move. Slowly, he manages to lie down on his side. There’s no room for him to stretch any part of himself; he maneuvers his legs up to his stomach, using his arm as a pillow. He looks tired. Hungry. Locked between states, aborted transformation.

Hayley feels sick. Watching Klaus turn away from them, top of his head against the cage wall. As if they’re not even here; as if their presence is nothing of consequence. More of that horrible silence, watching him, and then one of them finally jumps into action. 

It’s Elijah, and Hayley can hear his teeth grind so hard she’s surprised his superstrength doesn’t crack them. Teeth as durable as the rest of him, it seems, but that’s the last thing on her mind as her hearing picks up on something else. Something outside. 

Elijah freezes, having heard it too. His gaze meets Hayley’s. Then he gets up off the floor, jaw set in determination, ready to fight. Hayley follows suit, and she helps a dazed Freya up as well, because Freya was supposed to be the one to lead this confrontation, that was her own insistence. Not that Hayley will be terribly disappointed if Freya has changed her mind.

And there he is. There’s Mikael.

He doesn’t look surprised to see them, he must have heard them or maybe he just knew this was inevitable, but there’s the beginning of a cold smirk on his face right before he notices Freya.

“Father, what have you done?” Freya demands, voice shaking. “What cruelty is this?”

The look on Mikael’s face is soft. The juxtaposition of it with everything else is jarring enough that Hayley can do nothing but stare.

“Freya, my darling. Do not tell me that hideous thing has poisoned you against me like it has all my other children.” Mikael’s voice turns a little pointed at the end there, nearly spitting out the word thing, but it’s still remarkably mild compared to the sheer amount of revulsion Hayley remembers seeing from him before, and she knows it isn’t out of any change of heart. Just look at Klaus. No, it’s because he’s addressing his beloved Freya.

In the face of Mikael’s distraction, Elijah has turned once again to trying to free Klaus. Trying being the operative word.

“Why is it not working? Release him at once.” It shouldn’t be intimidating, crouched as he is, Mikael looking down on him, but Elijah still manages to sound dangerous even from that position.

The cold smirk returns to Mikael’s face; detached amusement in his eyes as he’s turned his gaze away from Freya and onto the cage Elijah has been trying to open. 

Klaus is still lying on his side, not looking at any of them, like he’s pretending none of this is actually happening. There’s a layer of blood on him, along with the dirt, telling Hayley that he has been taken out of the cage at least once, not for pleasant purposes. He closes his eyes.

“Dahlia asked me to make him compliant and provided her magic for my method of doing so,” Mikael explains, and Hayley bites back a curse. Magical lock. Of course. Why not.

“To what end,” says Elijah with wide eyes, composure faltering, as he is clearly reaching the end of his rope. 

“You would help Dahlia?” Freya’s expression is completely and utterly betrayed, her voice coming out devastated. 

Mikael looks as though Freya punched him in the gut. There’s a sound from Klaus—the first sound they’ve heard from him since they found him—and Hayley thinks it would be a bitter laugh, if he could open his mouth. The muzzle makes it sound more like a choked off cough.

“For you, Freya,” Mikael says. “She has agreed to let you go. And she does not want to repeat her mistakes.”

Looking away from her, Mikael sneers and kicks the cage. They all jump as its sides rattle loudly—Klaus included, cringing away from the noise. He jerks back, retreating as much as he can to the furthest wall of his cage. 

Mikael laughs. “She wants the abomination to be a father to his atrocity of a spawn.”

“I’ve heard enough from you,” Hayley snarls.

Fighting Mikael feels rather like wrestling a giant bear, but Hayley is a wolf. She’s a wolf and she doesn’t know if she’s ever been this angry. She gets off hit after hit, bite after bite, barely even feeling satisfaction at the knowledge of what her venom will do, too out of her mind with rage, too consumed with wanting to break Mikael into a thousand little pieces.

She gets her hands on the white oak stake in his jacket pocket.

“Hayley, no! I can remove Dahlia’s magic! I can free Klaus, do not hurt my father.”

It’s a little late for that, Hayley thinks, spitting out blood. Her rage finds a new target, whirling around to face Freya.

“Your father?” she repeats harshly. ”Wake up, Freya. He’s not the man you knew.”

Freya holds Hayley’s gaze, stubborn determination. “But he is my father nonetheless.”

Hayley’s mouth twists, and she lets Mikael go. “Break the spell,” she grits out, putting the stake in her own jacket.

“Freya, do not break the spell.” Mikael is up again in seconds, as if nothing happened. “You wanted your freedom and you have it. Do not throw it away for the degenerate beast!”

Silence falls. Hayley looks at Freya, whose mouth twists with bitterness, even as her eyes are very wide.

“That is the first time you have ever yelled at me,” says Freya, silent tears escaping her.

Mikael’s entire face softens. “Freya...”

She looks at him with contempt.

“I don’t think I care much for it,” she whispers, raising her hand just as he steps forward. His neck snaps. 

Hayley is tempted to go kick his unconscious body.

“Good,” Elijah says, finally. Gaze moving from Mikael back to the cage, tunnel vision, nothing in his head but a desire to get Klaus out of there. “Now Niklaus, free him.”

Nothing happens.

“Freya,” says Hayley, voice pitched low in warning. “Do it.”

“I... I...”

Hayley steps forward, approaching her.

“You will get your freedom from Dahlia,” Hayley says. “But not like this. Look at him. He’s your brother.”

Freya’s wild gaze is focused at no one and nothing at all, as she rapidly shakes her head, more silent tears falling from her face. “He will kill Mikael,” she mutters. “He will never trust me.”

“You do realize that he can hear you.” Elijah’s voice is dry and unamused.

Freya continues to shake her head, manic. “How are we supposed to defeat Dahlia if there is no trust? This way, I have—I have—”

“Look at him, Freya,” Elijah says. “Look at what your beloved father has done. Ask yourself if your freedom is worth this. And worth another child growing up the way that you did, because let’s face it, even if Dahlia would allow Niklaus to be a father to Hope under duress, it would not be a good life and you know it. Think of Hayley—a desperate mother. Think of your brother. Look at him.”

As slowly and painstakingly as Klaus changed positions earlier, Freya wrenches her gaze towards her brother. 

Three sounds follow in rapid succession:

Freya’s sob; her knees hitting the ground as she falls to them; the crackle of magic. Elijah tries for the cage again and rips off the ceiling with ease. It clatters to the ground. 

Quicker than humanly possible, Elijah grabs Klaus and hoists him out of the cage. And suddenly, all of Klaus’s tired apathy disappears. Not in a good way. 

He trashes, slashing blindly at his brother, who backs away in shock after taking a claw to the face. Three red stripes, deep and red and dark, beneath Elijah’s wide eyes-—healing seconds after as if they never were. 

Without Elijah holding him upright, Klaus’s legs dump him unkindly to the ground. Immediately, he scrambles backwards, wedging himself against the wall like a cornered animal. Breathing hard, what little fur there is is bristling, and Hayley recognizes the signs of a panic attack. 

She’s never seen Klaus like this before. But she figures, if anything would put him in this state... Being captured by the father who abused him and then spent a thousand years hunting him and dehumanizing him—that dehumanization being put into practice this way—and let’s not forget what happened before that, innocent Hope taken by the nightmare of Klaus’s own childhood. Yeah, that would do it. 

Klaus’s claws tear at the muzzle but he can’t manage to rip it off. Tearing into himself now, he draws blood, chest heaving with sobs that can’t escape. Hayley’s crouched in front of him in moments, braced for his claws, but still without hesitation as she puts her hand under the leather strap of the muzzle that goes around his head, and pulls—with all her hybrid strength. Still, nothing happens. It must be spelled, too.

Klaus turns his eyes—wide, wild, desperate and still glowing yellow—on Freya.

For a moment, all Freya does is look back at Klaus. As if, after all of Elijah and Hayley’s requests for her to do, she suddenly can’t stop looking at him. Still quietly devastated, she begins to chant softly, reaching out her hand. The magic becomes electric and powerful in the air. Hayley can tell the exact moment that it worked. Klaus does, too, tearing the muzzle off his face and throwing it away from him.

Free from the muzzle, Klaus finally seems to relax. Hayley’s hands are still on his shoulders, and he leans into her.

Hayley watches as he opens his mouth, working his jaw, and she was right about those fangs. The overall effect is even more disconcerting with his canines on display. This in-between state that Mikael forced him into, the hybridity that Mikael hates so much. 

Klaus breathes in deep through parted lips. He bares his teeth and they change before Hayley’s eyes, becoming human-dull. Klaus stretches his mouth, and shakes his head, and his eyes return to their regular blue, changes sweeping over him until he’s back to looking human. Hayley realizes that the spell keeping him locked in his form must have been tethered to the muzzle.

And then Hayley realizes that she’s staring at his naked body, and she probably shouldn’t be doing that. Just as she looks away, Elijah steps forward. The message clear: I’ll take it from here.

Hayley feels both relief and a surge of possessiveness. Which is... ridiculous, considering everything, but she’s too tired to get into a mental debate with herself over what she should or shouldn’t be feeling. Klaus held her hand once and called her his family. She remembers she had felt so comforted. She wishes she could go back to that moment and do things differently.

She stops averting her eyes. She already knows every inch of him, intimately. 

“Where is Hope?” is the first thing out of Klaus’s mouth, with his voice hoarse and broken. 

Elijah hasn’t yet removed the blood still on his face with a handkerchief. A sign of how apocalyptic these events are, to be sure. “Dahlia still has her. But we will get her back, I swear it you.”

Elijah has touched his forehead to his brother’s, maybe to emphasize his point, or maybe to show that he’s not holding Klaus’s earlier panic against him, or maybe Elijah himself needs this to feel comforted. Klaus’s face is bone-white and there are shadows underneath his eyes.

“You must feed,” Elijah realizes, pulling back. Hayley jolts, a little, heart pounding as she considers offering her blood, but Elijah’s already biting into his own wrist before she can. Klaus’s face changes, but still he hesitates. Likely remembering that he hurt Elijah before. ”Feed, brother.”

Klaus opens and closes his mouth a few times, swallowing, getting used to having the muzzle completely off. At the insistence, Klaus finally gives in to his hunger. Elijah’s other hand positions itself on the back of Klaus’s head, cradling the unkempt curls as Klaus drinks greedily from his wrist. Klaus’s eyes close while he sucks at the wound.

It takes a moment for Hayley to realize when it’s been long enough. That Elijah’s not gonna be the one to stop Klaus, not about to deny his brother what he needs in this moment. 

Hayley joins them once more. “Okay,” she says, gently. “That’s enough. You don’t want Elijah to get delirious, right?”

Klaus wrenches himself away from Elijah’s wrist with a gasp.

Hayley half-expects Klaus to react ferally again upon being interrupted—she’s seen it happen with other hungry vampires—but the glow of his eyes disappears again, as do the veins underneath it. His gaze finds Hayley, stays there, while Elijah’s wrist retreats—but not the hand still lingering on Klaus’s hair.

Klaus looks at Hayley, and Hayley looks at Klaus, and it all passes between them. Every threat, every dismissal, every barbed insult aimed where it would hurt the most. 

Mikael is a threat to you.

Klaus’s eyes are the same color as Hope’s.

“Let’s go get our daughter,” he says, still with that broken voice.

They can’t actually get Hope, not yet, and that rankles. Freya keeps Mikael unconscious with a spell and Elijah promptly dumps him in the trunk of the car, before heading for the driver’s seat. 

The car ride home is silent. Hayley and Klaus are in the back. Klaus has been given some clothes but they’re not his usual fit. He looks so small, Hayley thinks. A far cry from the looming presence of rage and spite she knows he can be.

Klaus’s gaze is on his own reflection on the window. Normally Hayley would have a quip about that, but not now. Not as she watches Klaus continually reassure himself silently that he looks human. As if Mikael’s actually convinced him of the degeneracy of his hybridity. Hayley knows it isn’t true. She knows Klaus just needs time. But it hurts to watch, nonetheless; it makes her own wolf want to keen. 

The sky is a mixture of grey and gold—low slate-dark clouds, with the sun stealing yellow through a thin patch. It makes the raindrops on the window blaze golden. There’s nothing to do but think, in the silence. 

Let’s go get our daughter. 

But when Hayley tried to convince Klaus of the unification ceremony, it’d been my daughter. 

He was the one who corrected her, then, in the bayou. And she’d acknowledged that, ours, with a bitter twist of her mouth before throwing Esther’s and Finn’s actions at his feet for him to take the blame for. 

She’s just glad Klaus wasn’t around to hear her snap in the compound about not wanting Hope to be a Mikealson. 

The car comes to a stop, and for a moment, none of them exit. 

Freya is the one who breaks the silence. With a subdued tone:

“I sent Mikael to get the materials to kill Dahlia. When he wakes I’ll keep him weak with a spell and ask him how his—how his progress had gone.” No one comments on the hitch of Freya’s voice.

Hayley doesn’t follow the others inside the compound. She walks until her hearing no longer picks up on the exclamations of the ones left behind. Rebekah demanding to know if Klaus is alright, followed by Elijah quietly murmuring to leave him be; Marcel’s sigh of relief, not entirely for himself, and Davina’s sarcastic comment on Klaus needing another rescue that doesn’t hide how scared she’d been. Jackson’s voice, asking where Hayley is.

It’s all drowned out by enthusiastic jazz music on the streets, and Hayley lets it wash over her. Takes in the sights of the city she was born in, the city her daughter was born in. The French Quarter that she wanted to raise Hope in but people keep interfering. 

Now that they’ve gotten Klaus, the reality of Hope’s absence seems a tangible thing in the air, Hayley can almost grasp it. She feels so restless. She hates waiting, she needs to get Hope back now, but she can’t.

Hayley doesn’t know how long she stands there. Watching people play instruments and make art and laugh, carefree in a way that Hayley wants for her daughter, until she hears Jackson’s voice.

“Hey, are you okay?”  

Touch, on her shoulder. Her wolf wants to settle with it, knows the vows she made to Jackson, but she doesn’t let it. Not this time. Batting away his hands, “Not now, Jackson.”

He blinks at her. “Are you upset with me? I don’t understand.”

“I’m—I am upset.” She meant to dismiss it, but the words escape her firmly. “I am upset that my daughter has been taken from me. I am upset that I dismissed the threat to her that ended up leading to her getting taken from me. I am upset that—the reason I dismissed it—was you.”

Jackson had been watching her with sympathetic eyes the whole speech, but once more eyes crease with confusion. “Me?” 

And Hayley sighs. Long, and drawn-out; as warm round notes of trumpets fill the air.

“You really got me, Jackson,” she admits. “This whole fantasy of—none of this being Hope’s fight, and us being able to protect her ourselves, and taking her away from all the Mikealsons, not just Klaus, to do it. Giving her a normal life with you. But she’s a tribid, first of her kind, what’s normal about that?”

Something in her chest loosens, as she continues,

“I’ve known she was special from the day I learned I was pregnant with Klaus Mikealson’s miracle baby,” she drawls, letting out a laugh. “She is a Mikealson. For better or for worse. And there is a better, because for each Esther, Finn, Mikael and Dahlia, there is Rebekah, Elijah, Marcel. There is Klaus. He is her father, not you. He has a right to her as much as I do. They will always love and defend her, they’d rather die than hurt her. And I know that you promised to do the same, but Jackson, I can’t—I can’t do this anymore if you can’t accept the Mikealsons as her family. And... As mine.”

She knows exactly what she’s saying. It isn’t just her and Jackson’s marriage on the line. If they don’t honor their vows, Jackson will lose her ability to turn at will. In order for the ritual to work, it has to be a real marriage in every way for the rest of their lives, that’s how Jackson had put it. 

Be each other’s family, above all others.

But Jackson will never choose the Mikealsons over the pack. And Hayley... Well. Hayley tried to do it his way, to adopt that same mindset. 

I’m not gonna let you use them to settle old scores. 

Those words might as well have come straight out of Jackson’s own mouth.

“You know I love you, Hayley. I just wanted to help you, and your little girl.”

“Yeah,” she whispers, because that wasn’t exactly an answer, “I know.”

Hayley walks past Jackson and heads back home. 

The compound is quiet. A far cry from the earlier whirlwind of reactions as Klaus returned. Hayley moves without conscious thought, her feet leading her to the nursery of her baby girl.

Klaus is there.

He’s got his back to her, gazing out the window. Wearing clean clothes, his own this time, hair still damp from the shower he must have just taken.

Hayley swallows. “Guess we had the same idea.”

“Guess so.”

Her eyes snag on the toy knight. The chesspiece, Hope’s favorite toy, carved by Klaus a thousand years ago. No teething Hope to gnaw on it with her wide blue eyes and her high-pitched little laughter. 

“It feels familiar, doesn’t it?” Hayley’s voice is but a whisper. “Only this time, Hope’s not with her aunt, who loves her. She’s with your aunt, who—”

Klaus whirls around to face her. “Yes, Hayley, I’m aware, my terrible aunt, my fault. Just like my mother, and my brother. I’m the reason Hope is always in danger, go on, say it,” he demands.

“No,” says Hayley, “and I was wrong to ever act like it was.”

The look of surprise on Klaus’s face is heartbreaking, but she soldiers on.

“I condemned you for making Hope the heir to all your enemies when everyone who has come after her so far has never been an enemy made on your own merits. They’re not enemies because of your actions. Dahlia, Finn and Esther were all acting based on Esther’s deal, made before you were even born, and Mikael—” 

Here, she falters. Through the lump in her throat, she manages,

“Klaus, what happened to you—”

Klaus doesn’t let her struggle her way to the end of that sentence. 

He speaks quickly and decisively, as if that will make her stop lingering on the memories, “Since I turned Mikael has never seen me as anything more than an animal. A beast, etcetera, for ten centuries. I’m used to it. Don’t concern yourself on my account.”

Don’t concern yourself, he says, as if Hayley hasn’t spent the past seven days fearing for his life. But that’s the point, that’s what he doesn’t see, because of what Hayley said about Mikael before all of this.

Or maybe he does see, but he wants to pretend he doesn’t, having been hurt by what she said and wanting to hurt her in turn. Base animal instincts. She wonders if Mikael’s view of Klaus has actually altered Klaus’s personality over the course of a thousand years. Like Mikael talked so dehumanizingly to Klaus enough times—that hideous creature my children call brother, she remembers Mikael saying when she first met him—that he began to internalize it. Which makes what happened with Mikael now an even worse nightmare.

“Just let me say this, okay?”

Hayley reaches out, puts her hand on Klaus’s arm. He stills beneath the touch. 

“The point of marrying Jackson was so there’d be an army of superwolves to protect Hope, that was how I put it. And yet, when you brought a threat to me, I didn’t want to risk the wolves—because Jackson wouldn’t want to risk them, for something he would have perceived as a threat to you only. And it just... got in my head, I guess. Jackson is my husband but when it comes to Hope, you’re the one who should have my loyalty.”

A strange sensation washes over her, and she knows the unification just sputtered out and died. For a moment, she’s a little incredulous. That’s really all it took? Guess none of those ancient wolves were doing blended families.

In that case, it’s probably for the best.

“I should have heard you out. I shouldn’t have stubbornly ignored what I knew—that the threat Mikael posed was true. And even if he really wasn’t a threat to Hope—even if it was just to you—I shouldn’t have been cavalier about your life. Nor Marcel’s, Josh’s, everyone tied to you. You, the father of my baby. I’m sorry.”

Klaus does nothing but stare at her. She swallows through the lump in her throat and pulls him into an embrace. He makes a soft, wrecked, indescribable sound in his throat. Three long seconds pass, and then slowly, his arms wrap around her. 

Finally, Hayley breaks. 

She bursts out crying, right then and there, with her face tucked into Klaus’s shoulder, and her nails clutching his back. It feels like all of it is hitting her at all once, the fear, the horror, the grief, and those magnified vampire emotions won’t let her hold it back any longer. 

“I want our daughter back,” Hayley cries, muffled by the fabric of Klaus’s henley. The fabric of which is soft against her skin, smelling of laundry detergent. The necklaces he wears press against her hair. She can hear his heart racing, but when he speaks, his voice is steady.

“As do I,” murmurs Klaus, a solid presence in her arms. “And so we shall get her back.”

There’s a hint of the old Klaus: the one who doesn’t panic but plays 3D chess, plotting and scheming and getting it done. Hayley feels herself calm at the idea of it. Two pissed off parents? Dahlia never had to deal with that before.

“Yes,” Hayley says, pulling away slightly. “Together.”

“Together,” he repeats it like a vow, and Hayley notices that their foreheads are touching. She breathes in deep. Inhales part of Hope’s scent, intermingled with the scent of whatever expensive shampoo Klaus used earlier. He looks at her with all the same throat-closing tenderness of I do trust you. More than you know. Of the real moments are vibrant and I’ve got you, love, I’ve got you and I’m beginning to think we’re a lot alike, you and I.

She doesn’t want to pull away. “Klaus, I don’t want to be alone tonight,” she whispers, like it’s a shameful secret. 

It seems to break the spell for him, as he lets go of her. She misses the touch immediately, as he turns his back to her, his gaze back to the window. 

“I believe you know where to find your husband.”

There’s a lot Hayley could say to that in response. Among which the fact that she’d rather take a break from Jackson right now—at least until Hope is safe so she can properly digest everything that happened—and the unification won’t even suffer for it because she already broke that. 

But the words that come out of her mouth are, “I don’t want you to be alone tonight, either.”

That makes Klaus look at her again. Gaze unreadable. For some reason it makes Hayley think about the first time she stepped foot in this nursery that Klaus built, and she could picture something for her daughter that she herself never truly had: a home. Full of warmth and light and the smell of delicious food. Family.

“Very well, then,” Klaus says, softly. 

Hayley leaves the nursery, hears him follow behind her as requested. She lies down in her bed, waits for Klaus to follow suit. 

He looks so awkward as he does, she almost laughs. A far cry from the aftermath of their first night together, this assuredness to all of Klaus’s movements that only comes with extensive life experience, as he traced the crescent birthmark on her skin. But Hayley doesn’t laugh, because the sight of him in that cage is still burned into her retinas, and it was only hours ago. 

It is that life experience, she thinks, that has allowed him not to break under the heightened emotion like she has, beyond that initial panic in the moment itself. She wishes he felt safe enough to do so. To let go of that guarded expression she sees on his face, now, still. But she knows that there’s been a—perhaps not a break of trust, but something very close to it. She can see it in his eyes. 

Hayley lies stiffly on her side, facing him, but they don’t touch. For a moment, they just stare at one another. She can hear church bells, ringing cold and high and distant.

And then Klaus bridges the gap. It isn’t much. His thumb brushes Hayley’s jaw as he moves his hand to her shoulder. That’s all it takes for Hayley to give in to the desire to slide closer. Until she can feel his breath on her hair, his chin jutting into her shoulder; until her hip is slotted against his and she can feel the rise and fall of his chest against her ribs, as she nestles into his warmth. 

The embrace is far from careless. But that doesn’t matter. It’s a start.

As her eyes close, she feels Klaus bury his face in her hair; and she drifts off to sleep.