WHEN TIME FRACTURES || HOPE MIKAELSON x RYAN CLARKE

Chapter Thirteen

And then came the morning after.

They had been questioned by the police nearly all night long, until the moon itself had found shelter under the lowest hills beyond the horizon, and they were both mentally and physically drained.

But Hope had found she didn't have much to offer except what her own eyes had seen, which MG was still slowly processing, a rather large headache creeping in as well.

On February 20th, the news would make the front headlines, their own testimonies blended in an endless sea of dull sympathies.

And yet, there had not been a more mundane day of 1934.

February 17th.

He didn't think he would ever be able to forget.

To be fair, everything after Roy walked in, covered in blood from head to toe was nothing but a blur.

But he knew Hope had been the strongest -she always was.

He still recalled the way she held him firmly as his heightened senses caught the underlying coppery scent in the sea of people, twisting his face into his most monstrous features.

The screams. The racing hearts. The man.

But before the detective, MG had stood his ground and defended his great-grandfather with unhinged fervor as he recalled the dreary sight he'd laid eyes upon, only for his pleas to become mere scribbles on a discarded notepad.

He didn't fool anyone; he lacked strength and unbiased state of mind when it came to these things.

She'd been strong for him -for everyone- and yet, all it took was one single step.

She stepped inside the dimly lit room she'd called hers the past days and fell back on the bed, the last remaniants of her strength crumbling to dust as she thought of how much distress this day had brought.

Roy Howard was currently in police custody, soon to become a nameless prisoner, who would go down in history as inmate number something, charged with the murder of his wife and infant son.

''He didn't do it,'' she heard her companion sigh quietly from his spot behind the desk, his voice soft but determined and above all, certain.
He'd ever been an angry person, but this was the kind of things to break a man.

Against all odds, the tribrid nodded, her hardening gaze fixed aimlessly on the ceiling. ''I know.''

The vampire laughed humorlessly, and she turned to him, finding his scoffs intensifying.
''My mom's never mentioned it, you know?'' he snorted, his eyes cast on a spot near the door, ''I didn't even know my grandpa had a brother. Now I know why.''

''MG... I'm...'' she trailed off, unable to find the supposedly right words -words which had been carved in her brain after each loss she'd suffered.

''I know.'' he said, glancing at the pieces of evidence he'd compelled the police into giving him.

The most ironic in all of this?

They were outstanding bite marks.

Roy couldn't have possibly ripped out his family's throat with his flat human teeth, but MG had someone else in mind, or rather something else.

''You think Aion did it?'' he still asked, jaw clenched as his glare found the black and white pictures again. He'd scattered them across the desk earlier in the evening, with the necessary strength he'd borrowed from Hope, and had his intense gaze focused on them for the past hour, never once letting his thoughts wander off; not until he found the culprit and punished them accordingly.