Eisa had a panic attack.
She lost track of what was happening. Somehow, she got closer to the altar, which was covered in blood. Somehow, she fed on Klaus, who wanted to heal her from her wolf bite.
Her lips were red, and her strength was returning. Yet, her lungs felt like they might explode. Her legs began to shake, which to her, made no sense. She slowly sank down beside her brother, staring at the lifeless body. Hayley's eyes had been closed. Eisa didn't need to touch her to know that her skin was cold.
Without meaning to, she started to breathe faster. She put her hand on her chest, fearing her heart might burst out. It hurt. Parched. Sweaty. Shaking. Swaying as if she might throw up. She covered her mouth with her other hand, trying to muffle the sound of a breathy sob that escaped her. Her eyes burned as tears spilled out of them. She turned away, not able to look at her any longer.
"Eisa," said Elijah gently, kneeling beside her, taking both her hands. "Eisa, you're not breathing. Follow my lead. Inhale—"
She let out a scream, ripping her hands away from his, to pull her shirt up to cover her face. "No!" she gasped, trying to stand, but it felt as though the ground was not there. Was she floating above it? "No— no— I don't want to— you can't make me."
"Eisa, you must breathe."
"I DON'T WANT TO!" she screeched, showing him her already bloodshot eyes. "Why, Elijah? Why—" she panted, "why the bloody hell— should I breathe? I can't— it hurts— she's not... she's not alive... it's my fault..." she tripped on her own feet, crashing to the ground. She slammed her hands against the ground, shaking her head. She didn't even feel as though she could move on her own.
Elijah pulled her up, holding her in his arms as he sat on one of the pews, stroking her hair. She was still struggling to breathe, and a part of her wished it to continue. If she died, she would not feel this pain anymore. If she died, she wouldn't see Hayley again.
And yet, she couldn't die. Not only was she a vampire, she was an Original. A panic attack wouldn't even kill a human.
"Please, stop," she moaned out, holding her head as she beat her fists into it. "Please, stop the pain... I can't... I can't turn it off, Elijah, I can't..."
Elijah shook his head, gulping back a sob of his own. This was the first time Eisa had ever even tried to turn her humanity off.
And she couldn't.
"Oh my god," she sobbed, covering her face once Elijah finally managed to get her imitating his slow breaths. "She's— she's dead. Why is she dead? What— what happened?"
"Cassie," said Klaus weakly. "She... she corrupted the spell. My blood was used to link the wolves to me. The Correas— Guerreras, whatever they bloody are— used my strength to keep from turning when they triggered their curses. She did it all. She orchestrated the attack on the witches, controlling the minds of those vampires. She and Francesca bombed the Bayou. Cassie told Marcel about the moonlight rings. She told him where to find Jackson and Oliver. She and the other Harvest girl— they did it all. They took the baby... they killed Hayley..."
"Where did they take the baby?" asked Elijah, helping Eisa to her feet. She refused to look at Hayley's body as Klaus laid her on the altar.
"I expect she's in the Lafayette Cemetery," said Klaus. "Eisa, take Hayley to the Compound—"
"No," she said, shaking her head and staring at the floor. "I can't touch her. I can't look at her. We need to save your daughter. I... I will not fail her the way I failed her mother."
They rushed to the Lafayette Cemetery. Usually, one would have expected to see witches everywhere. Instead, there was nothing.
No witches. No baby.
"There isn't anyone here!" said Eisa tiredly, after trying to search tombs and listen for chanting.
"This is the only place they can be!" said Klaus, growing irritated with her. "We'll keep searching."
"We should have found them by now, and we haven't!" snarled Eisa. "They're not here! We need to split up, search the city—"
"The Harvest was here!" Klaus yelled. "The Reaping was here! They're about to perform a ritual which will feed their ancestors for centuries! Ancestors who are buried HERE!" He faltered, looking at a particular statue atop one of the tombs. "This statue— we've passed by this three times, all whilst going in the same direction."
"This isn't real," said Eisa, covering her eyes and trying to listen again, as well as breathe. "None of this is real. They're tricking us. They're— they're cloaked, they're hiding in plain sight. We can't trust our eyes..."
Klaus refrained from saying that she sounded like a lunatic. He hopped onto the tomb, his face going pale. "An illusion," he muttered. "An endless cemetery. They are here. But we will not find them easily."
"Perhaps we should split up," offered Elijah. "There are three of us. It may be infinite, but there is only so much ground they can create. One of us is bound to come across them."
Eisa shook her head, leaning against one of the tombs. "No, splitting up doesn't make sense anymore... they'd easily best us on our own..." she covered her ears and shut her eyes, trying to smell. "Blood. There's blood. But it's everywhere."
"I can feel them," said Klaus, starting to walk down a particular path. "Eisa, one of your witches—"
"They wouldn't get here in time," she said in frustration.
"How convenient, none of your witches are reliable."
"Do not pin this solely on me!" she spat, whirling to face them. "We were all supposed to keep Hayley safe! But what were you doing? Starting conflicts, trying to create armies, making a new enemy every bloody day until the number got so large, we could not fend them off! This is not just my fault! It's yours as well. You didn't even have the decency to treat Hayley with kindness, to be there for her during the pregnancy. Your daughter lost her mother just seconds after being born. She's about to be sacrificed, and all you can do is deflect blame. I accept it, but not entirely, Niklaus. I tried. I tried to keep her safe. I tried to protect them both."
She started to tremble again. "I... I let myself know her. I didn't want to. I attempted to push her away, and she insisted. For a moment I— I was happy. She saw past my flaws. The bloodlust. The violence. I thought for just a second that we'd finally have peace." She started to tear up. "I lowered every barrier I ever put up, I told her everything, I started to trust and to hope—" she squeezed her eyes shut, tears flowing onto her cheeks, "god... in a thousand years, I'd forgotten what it was like to feel hope. Hope that things would work out this time, that we'd be together, as a family, as we always should have been. Now it's gone. There's no hope without Hayley. Hayley is gone. Hope is gone. And all this pain I feel— I can't turn it off. I just have to live with it."
Klaus and Elijah had both teared up. Elijah moved to her, pulling her into a hug, while Klaus took her hand, squeezing it tightly. "You can tell your niece how much you cared for her mother when we save her."
She nodded, forcing herself to step back. "We need to get a move on, now," she whispered. "Otherwise, we won't make it to her in time."
They zipped through the tombs, trying to mark the paths they'd already taken by marking tombs with broken pieces of rock they found along the way.
"This isn't working!" hissed Eisa, kicking into one of the tombs, and finding just another candle set up behind the broken wall.
"Then, we move faster," offered Klaus.
"Or smarter."
Eisa whirled around, seeing Hayley standing right behind them.
Dazed. Exhausted. Dark circles under her eyes. Cold radiating from her flesh. She appeared more pale.
Undead.
"How is this possible?" whispered Eisa, reaching for her hand, and finding she could touch it.
"I woke up in the church," said Hayley numbly, staring at her blankly. "I felt this hunger... I knew what I needed. I can feel her. She's here. I can feel my baby."
Klaus was the first to figure it out. "You died with the baby's blood still in your system." He looked at his siblings. "She's in transition."
"Which means," said Elijah, "she has to drink the blood of the child if she is to survive."
"To be reborn a hybrid," confirmed Klaus.
Hayley shook her head. "I don't care about me. I'm gonna go find our daughter." She walked right out, and the three Originals followed her.
Somehow, the new, still not fully turned hybrid knew where to go. She walked confidently, her hair bouncing with each step she took. She led them right to the cemetery's altar, where they found Cassie and Abigail, holding a sacrificial blade to the fire, while a crying baby waited atop the stone.
"Nouvelle vie," the witches chanted, "nouvelle âme, mélange avec nous."
"NOOO!" Hayley screamed, just as they raised the knife. Elijah was fastest, grabbing a nearby vase and throwing it so hard, the knife clattered out of Cassie's hand, buried under broken pieces of vase.
Cassie and Abigail immediately stepped forward, linking hands and pushing their hands forward, creating a blast so powerful, it knocked the four adults onto the floor. "La mère, le père, le frère, la sœur—"
"Challenging us in our place of power," said Cassie, glaring at the Originals. "How foolish of you. This is the moment when we are strongest, just after a full moon. Every French Quarter Ancestor is keeping you away. You cannot stop us."
Eisa was doing her best to claw her way forward, trying to get to the altar. It was a good distraction, because Cassie had moved her hand to focus more of her magic on Eisa, giving Klaus and Elijah an opening to leap off to each side, trying to get to the altar from behind the witches.
Abigail was the one who noticed this, and she turned to stop them. Hayley reached back for a piece of a rusted gate, and ripped it off, tossing it right through Abigail's abdomen, causing the spell to falter. From the side, a new figure tore forward, and Marcel seized the baby, holding her gently before speeding away, getting Klaus to follow him immediately.
Cassie's eyes widened, and with a quick 'pop' she vanished into thin air, the air in the cemetery becoming quite still.
Eisa sped to Abigail, grabbing her by the hair and shoving her into one of the tombs, making the girl cry out in pain, barely able to stand as she bled out.
"You're going to be a good girl and tell us what this is all about," she snapped, pressing her heel into the witch's throat. "Tell us willingly, or I'll go into your mind and get the information myself."
"Please!" whimpered Abigail, holding her hands up weakly. "Cassie— she said we had to— she said— she said that the Ancestors willed it. That she had asked us to get it done."
"She?" asked Elijah. "Who's she?"
Abigail scoffed, lowering her voice to a whisper. "They told us you were the one who offered for her to be consecrated by us. Do you really not know?"
Elijah turned pale. "So, not even death can stop my mother from seeking the annihilation of her own flesh and blood."
"Cassie said that Esther needed it to happen," Abigail panted, her head slumping back. "Never said why... just said... we couldn't stop until it was done. Cassie... she's been communicating with the Ancestors since she came back... that the baby had to die... had to be consecrated. She said that the child was an abomination—"
Eisa's jaw went slack, and she kicked out, knocking Abigail's head right off. "Eisa," said Elijah sharply. "Why did you—?"
"She would have heard, and then, the Ancestors would know about it," she said slowly, staggering back. "Cassie isn't communicating with Esther. She is Esther."
Elijah frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I should have seen it before. The way she spoke to me, so formal, and strange. The things she said... things our mother has said..."
"I suggest you return home to the rest of your abominable family."
"It's as if she knew us so well... as if she'd been with us for more than a few seconds. I thought I was meeting her for the first time."
"You Mikaelsons, always with your threats and your violence. You never quite learn. I would think the loss of two brothers would have humbled you, perhaps even swayed you to cease murdering innocents."
"She ordered a bloody chamomile tea when she was right in front of me, just after she returned the grimoire. She took it. Of course she did— it's her grimoire! She kept insisting I didn't understand magic as well as her."
"Vampires will never understand magic. They will never understand how sacred it is, keeping nature balanced. I did my duty, and I was rewarded with life, with virtue that your kind will never know."
"Not to mention, when she was in the Compound, earlier, she called our brother by his full name, and didn't even need to practice the spell before she performed it."
"I've been reviewing the spell. I believe I'm quite ready to execute it, so long as Niklaus pulls through and delivers the stones. Which, according to Elijah, will happen."
"We should have felt our mother's hand in this," said Klaus once they returned to the Compound, and found that Marcel had brought the baby girl to safety. They were in Hayley's room, watching her give the baby her bottle. Now that she was in transition, she could no longer breastfeed. "We should have known she would not be bound by anything as obvious as death. And now she has control of the witches. They will never stop. Nor would I expect the Guerrera wolves to back down. Hayley and the child are wolf royalty, and as such, they are a threat to Francesca's claim to the leadership."
He shook his head. "They will never be safe. I have brought into the world a weapon they can use against me."
"Then we will arm ourselves," said Elijah. "Brother, we have fought every adversary in this town, and we have won. And we'll fight them again, no matter who they are! We will make this home a fortress."
Klaus shook his head. "I will not have her live her life as a prisoner."
"Then let's leave," said Eisa. "All of us. I have contacts all over the world. I have witches, I have houses of my own, I have vampires of my sireline that are compelled to do anything I want, and they're compelled to kill anyone who betrays me."
"Wherever we go," said Klaus, "however far we run, those who seek power and revenge will hunt us! They will hunt her.She has inherited all of our enemies with none of our defenses."
"So," mused Elijah, "whether we stay, or we leave— we condemn her."
Hayley stood, walking toward them, rocking the baby gently. "There's a third option," she murmured. "I grew up in a warzone. My parents thought they could protect me. But, in the end, they were slaughtered, and I spent my childhood alone and unloved."
She cast her daughter a weak smile, her lip trembling. "I made a promise, to my baby, and to myself, that she would not grow up like I did. That she would grow up safe, and loved. And yet, here she is, on her first day in this world, with a grandmother who is bent on sacrificing her—" she started to sob, "and a-a mother who has to drink the blood of her own baby to survive transitioning into a hybrid. And I'm the one who loves her the most." She swallowed hard. "I think the only thing to do is... send her away... while we stay behind and clean up the mess that we've made."
"That can't possibly work," said Elijah. "It's insane. That baby will be hunted so long as she lives. Our mother escaped—"
Klaus went to stand beside Hayley. "Not if no one knows she lives."
They formulated their plan. Eisa contacted the closest witch she could, one of her newest recruits who lived in Gretna, to come and do a few spells while they waited for Marcel (who was being surprisingly helpful) to find a stillborn baby to fake being the Mikaelson baby. Klaus and Hayley were discussing what to name their daughter in another room while Elijah went on a private jet to Mexico to retrieve Isela, who was Eisa's most trusted witch, and the one she wanted to stay with the baby and keep her safe. They had called Rebekah, who was more than happy to raise her niece with Isela's help, until it was time for her to return to New Orleans.
"My witch did her spells," said Eisa, once her recruit had been instructed to do a slight transfer spell, faking the baby's magical signature and putting it into a small tube, which would be inserted into the stillborn's throat, making any witch who passed by it, think that it was indeed a dead Mikaelson baby. "Isela will be back with Elijah anytime now..."
They walked right through the front doors as she said that. Isela ran to Eisa, squealing and pulling her into a hug.
"I admit, I had a bit of trouble finding her in the airport," said Elijah a bit awkwardly as he handed Klaus the bag of Isela's belongings.
"You didn't tell them what I looked like?" asked Isela, smacking Eisa's arm.
"Well, I didn't think it would be so difficult to pinpoint a Mexican woman with long dark hair, and a blood red dress!"
Elijah and Klaus, who had never met Isela, had clearly been expecting a wrinkled older woman, considering how long Eisa had had her under her service. Instead, they'd been greeted with a relatively young and very attractive woman.
"Did Marcel play his part?" asked Elijah, who seemed to be having a hard time keeping his eyes off the witch.
"He did," said Klaus. "He agreed to the terms, as well. I will compel him to forget what he knows of my child. In exchange, he wants vials of my blood."
"The witches should believe it," said Isela, taking a notebook of instructions that Eisa had prepared for her. "The other witch prepared a good spell, to make it seem like the stillborn baby had the same magical trace as your child. That baby will be buried, and they will sense the magic fading into their earth. Not too much magic, of course, because they didn't consecrate it properly. They will suspect nothing."
Elijah sighed. "Well, then, all that remains is to say goodbye."
Klaus cast a pained look to the upstairs area, where Hayley was completing her transition. "They will be watching us. All of them. The five of us leaving together will draw too much attention. I will take Isela and the baby, the three of us cloaked, to meet Rebekah. The rest of you, take your mourning public when I am gone."
"I wish we didn't have to ask that of Hayley," said Eisa a bit uncomfortably. "But... the loss she feels, albeit not due to her daughter's death, will be enough to sell it to the witches."
Holding Hayley's hand tightly, Eisa had taken her out into the street, where a candlelight vigil had been set up for the dead vampires, also known as 'deceased community members.' They'd had Elijah take a small plaque reading 'Baby Mikaelson' with a small angel on it, to be pinned to the wall before the two women arrived.
It was ready for them when they got there. The crowd parted, and Hayley knelt on the ground, setting down a bouquet of flowers before beginning to cry. She kissed her fingertips, then touched them to the plaque, prior to taking Eisa's hand and motioning for her to take her back home.
"Hey," said Eisa, leaning in the doorway of Hayley's room an hour later. She held a tray of beignets, tea, coffee, and some fruit, beside a blood bag. "Hungry?"
Hayley nodded wordlessly, sitting up from her bed as Eisa set the tray down. "Do you truly trust Isela?" asked the hybrid quietly after a few moments. "Like... with your life?"
Eisa nodded. "I found her when she was eighteen, beaten and cast out of her Coven in Nayarit because she killed the man who sexually assaulted her younger sister. I killed the witches in her Coven and rescued her sister. I got them a place to live, got vampires to watch over them. When her sister was of age, I paid for her to move to the United States, to attend college. I have vampires keeping her safe, too. Isela and I have gotten to know each other well. She's never failed me. She's kind, generous, selfless, motherly, and she's one of the strongest witches I have in my contacts. She will keep your daughter and Rebekah cloaked. She will get them anything they need. Isela loves kids. She wouldn't betray me, after all I've done for her."
Hayley nodded. "Alright. I trust you, Eisa. So... I'll trust her." She blinked a few times before opening the blood bag and starting to drink. "Did it feel this weird when you first turned?"
"A lot weirder. You'll get used to it. I know Nik said we ought not leave the house much, but I don't think it will be healthy for you to stay cooped up in here. If you'd like, I'd be happy to help you sneak out to train in the Bayou. Help you get a hang of your new skills."
Hayley's eyes seemed to shine. "I'd really, really appreciate that, Eisa."
The Original smiled. "Alright. Er— I didn't ask my brother. What did you name the baby?"
"She needs a name, Hayley," said Klaus gently, hearing Eisa calling Rebekah in another room.
Hayley looked down at the baby, trying to think. "Zoe? Caitlin? Katherine?"
Klaus laughed. "God, no."
Hayley half-smiled, realizing why he did that. Silly idea. "I never knew I could love something so much. It honestly feels... awful. Like it might kill me."
Klaus became sad. "It nearly did. I'm sorry the beginning of her life was so violent."
Hayley shook her head. "It's not your fault, Klaus. I know that you fought for us."
Klaus came closer, kneeling beside her. "You know, when Eisa thought you were dead, she said she'd forgotten what it was like to feel hope. She said, and I quote, 'There's no hope without Hayley. Hayley is gone. Hope is gone.' My sister loves you, even if she has yet to say it to your face."
That gave her the perfect idea. "Hope," whispered Hayley, caressing the baby's head. "Hope Mikaelson."
The Original hybrid's lips curled up. "Hope Andrea Mikaelson."
Hayley moved to lean against Eisa's shoulder. "We named her Hope. Because of you."
Eisa took her hand, squeezing it. "Hope Mikaelson," she breathed. "That's a good name."
Hayley tilted her head upward, and Eisa pulled back a bit, wanting to look at her properly. The hybrid slid her palm over Eisa's face, causing the Original to close her eyes.
"Please don't blame yourself for any of it," whispered Hayley, crawling onto her, seating herself right on Eisa's lap. "You saved her. All of you did. I'm still here. We all made mistakes. I can't stand to see you beating yourself up over it. Don't limit yourself. I'm here. I'm yours."
Eisa put her forehead against Hayley's. "Are you sure you want this right now? Are you sure that this... me... is what you want? You may not wish for me to blame myself, but if I had been more attentive, I would have realized that Cassie was really Esther. You wouldn't have been turned into a hybrid. Hope would be able to live here."
"I do want you," whispered Hayley. "Maybe not all the way, right now, because I feel... so weird, in this body, and I want to enjoy it completely. I want to be more comfortable with my vampirism, with the heightened emotions... before we do too much. But this..." she let her lips brush over Eisa's, "I want. Kiss me, Eisa. Kiss me, because I can't live another minute without it."
The Original wrapped an arm around her waist, bringing their mouths crashing together.