Heroes, Villains And The Shades In Between

Darkness

Bittersweet visions of his family overtook him at irregular intervals, bittersweet in that he would occasionally be able to spend time with them or see them happy, carefree in a manner that they had had little opportunity to be in the past, something he fully accepted as his fault. Occasionally it would be a memory, at other times, he would see his siblings engaged in mundane activities so like what Klaus was used to seeing them do that he had difficulty in separating memory from hallucination and from what he desperately wished to see and be a part of. The hallucinations that affected him the most, perhaps, were those in which he would be able to see his littlest wolf. When he would be able to hold her in his arms, talk to her and play with her. What killed him would be when it would end and he would realise that it wasn't real. That it couldn't be real. And then he would see her again an indeterminable amount of time later and fool himself into believing, if even for just a moment, that he wasn't as alone as he feared.

Eventually, he grew unable to tell the difference between reality, memory and twisted hallucinations, all of them bleeding into each other, a blur of voices and images, each as real as the last.

But as they turned from mundane tasks and pleasant times to enraged voices, embittered pleas and fragments of heated arguments and spiteful words filled his visions, Klaus slowly withdrew into his own mind, delving deep through the layers in search of some kind of sanctuary, some form of reprieve from the torment that he suffered as he was slowly driven to insanity by the pain induced by that damned blade and by his own tattered mind. Gathering what remained of his torn and shattered mind, Klaus hid himself away, deep within the core essence of what made him, well, him, hiding away from the world, from the pain, from the memories.

He eventually hid himself so deep within himself that the only think left for him to hold onto was the basic essence of who he was. He was Klaus Mikaelson, The original hybrid. Father, friend and brother. Raised in shadows and schooled in pain. He was Klaus Mikaelson and he would survive.

♤♤♤

Hayley sighed as Hope's wails filled the room once again. It was moments like these when she really wished her baby girl wasn't so intuitive. The young child missed her home and her father. Hayley wasn't entirely sure how deep the bond between the two went or how in sync Hope was with Klaus but she was clearly aware that something was terribly wrong with him. Even though it had been months since they had left New Orleans, with the way Hope behaved, it may as well have been only just yesterday. There were nights, fewer and farther in between from each other as time wore on, that Hope would sleep through, that she would wake up  smiling from and be in a good mood all day. Hayley didn't know what caused them, but she was eternally grateful that her child would find comfort in her dreams, comfort that she herself couldn't quite provide her with because she simply didn't know how. She was only twenty-four, still so new to all of this. She could only pray and try to do right by Hope in the way that her baby girl deserved.

Hayley had been through half of the states already, searching desperately for the cures that would reunite her family (because after everything that had happened, she could deny it no longer) and she was tired. Every day, it seemed less and less likely that she would ever find the cures she needed. But then, she would look at the coffins, at her child and something woud spark, giving her the will to keep going, keep searching no matter how long it took. She wouldn't let her family down.

She picked up her daughter, slightly rocking her in an attempt to quieten her. Hope looked at her with large, tear-filled blue eyes, so like Klaus' that it made her heart hurt. None of them deserved the cards they were dealt with and she had seen how the father of her child had changed from the paranoid, distrustful man he had been to the man he had become, the one willing to put family above all and she hated that it was now, when they were finally learning how to be a family that they were all ripped apart from each other.

"Hey Sweetie, what's wrong? Please don't cry, Mommy's doing everything she possibly can and we'll be back home before you know it, I promise."

"Where Daddy? He gone! Mama, he hurting! Hurting so so bad! I no can help him!" Came Hope's cry in response as she entirely ignored her mother's placating words. Hayley raised a hand to her face in shock, her own eyes filling with tears.

"You can feel him?" She asked her daughter, voiced filled with fear and awe at her child's capabilities, fearful only for what it meant for little Hope. The three year old in question nodded seriously, putting her hand on her mother's chest, right above her heart.

"Here Mama. Hurts. Sad. I no can make better."

"Shit." Hayley swore, whenever Hope said 'sad' in such a situation, it generally meant things were already fucked up beyond all recognition. She then realised she had sworn in front of her very impressionable, very young child. "Pretend Mommy didn't say that." She said huriedly.

Hope smiled wickedly regaining her good humor in the face of her mother's slip up, "K Mama! But Auntie Freya won't like!" Klaus certainly hadn't been wrong when he said there was a bit of the devil in her. Hayley was blaming him for that particular gene. 

♤♤♤

Hayley was woken up in the middle of the night by the what sounded like a body being thrown through a wall. She shot out of bed, immediately running to Hope. The little girl was standing up in her crib, tiny hands clutching the sides, a determined expression on her face. Across the room lay the unmoving body of a man whom Hayley assumed was a vampire, the wall caved in by the force with which he had hit it. She slowly turned to Hope, taking in the child's stance and suddenly blank and unperturbed expression.

"Hope, did- did you do that?" She asked, remembering when Cami had told them how Hope had stopped her car and saved the both of them. Hope's answer was simple, absolute even in her fragmented style of speech.

"He want hurt you Mama. Bad bad bad. Then Unca 'Lijah be mad mad mad. I no let him hurt you."

"So you stopped him?" She was still speaking quietly, reeling from her little girl's display of power as she processed Hope's babbling. The three year old nodded her head slowly, blond hair bouncing slightly as she did so.

"This family terrifies me sometimes." Hayley murmured as she went to tie up their assailant so that she could interrogate him when he woke up.

♤♤♤

Rebekah woke up gasping, confused tears running down her face as she recalled the feeling when Nik turned away from her in her dream. She remembered every second of that ball with perfect clarity and none of what had just happened was part of that memory. She shivered, unable just yet to shake off the fear that had gripped her when Klaus told her, ever so gently in a manner so unlike him, that she wasn't real. It was only a dream, was it not? But why then, did something break inside of her when Nik said what he did? She couldn't imagine her brother ever even capable of such self-deprecation. When he turned away from her, why did his farewell seem so real and final?

It was only just a dream...