FAGE 007

Title: TheShadows of a Place I Have Been Before

Written for: Speklez

Written By: Silverspoon

Rating: T for violence and language

Summary/Prompt used: 'Knight in shining armour' and photo prompt.

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The Shadows of a Place I Have Been Before

Part IV

New Orleans, 2014

It was desperation and misery that on a chilly Autumn night drove Klaus to the centre of the city, where after many hours of flinging back Bourbon and shots he found himself on his knees in the dirt with a particularly pissed off witch standing over him. As blood trickled from the corners of his eyes, Klaus realised that he had finally lost the will to fight. The idea of resistance seemed almost a foreign concept, and so the hybrid knelt and took his punishment as it came. Even as he felt his throat beginning to constrict, the small bones being crushed by the invisible hand of the nameless witch's powers, Klaus did not react beyond a gasp. He was too absorbed in his sorrow to care much what would become of him now. He had lost his only daughter, his flesh and blood, and he was not certain that there was anything that could wrench him from this waking nightmare.

The sound of his own gurgling filled his ears and Klaus slumped forwards into the mud, his arms flying out either side of his body. He lay in the alleyway as though he were being crucified, and in a way he supposed that he was. The witch standing over him continued her chant, her voice growing more and more triumphant as the seconds mounted. Still the hybrid lay motionless, longing for the young woman to succeed where hundreds had failed before her over the centuries. Now, Klaus almost begged for the cold, silent release of death, because half a bottle of Bourbon ago reality had dawned that there would be no other reprieve from his pain. There was a time when Klaus would have simply indulged in a tantrum; gone on a murderous spree, tearing down his enemies where they stood and leaving them in a bloody pool to demonstrate the sheer weight of a hybrid's wrath. However, on this night, when Niklaus Mikaelson had born witness to the purest miracle the universe had to offer, even he could not bear to begin snuffing out lives.

As he lay in the darkness, his sight beginning to fail him as his body succumbed to the witch's spell, Klaus became faintly aware that the girl was speaking again. The tongue had changed and the English words washed over Klaus without quite seeming to make sense.

"I will make you burn from the inside out, I will tear you limb from limb, I will feed you your own eyeballs, and just when you think you can't take it anymore, I will put you back together and start all over again," the witch snarled, her anger almost palpable as she stared down her captor.

When Klaus made no move and failed to respond, the witch twisted her left hand into a claw and the hybrid felt something inside of his own body start to tear. He let out a high howl of pain and the witch tossed back her head, pride contorting her features.

"You killed Monique and Abigail…" she accused, her voice rising an octave as she added, "you killed my friends and you ruined the Harvest! You took everything from us… everything!"

Klaus' eyes rolled into the back of his skull and he fisted the dirt but made no move to attempt to thwart the witch. Instead, he welcomed her; forced every last muscle in his body into obedient submission with her spell and embraced the waves of pain that came crashing over him as a result. Klaus was well versed in physical pain – had been since he was a boy – but emotional pain was the demon capable of crippling him. So, for once, he succumbed to his own weakness, even basked in it, as he waited for everything to come grinding to a halt and for there to be peace at last.

He was faintly surprised when, through the sensation of the invisible flames that consumed his body, Klaus thought he felt a hand caress his cheek. When his eyes fluttered open, he gasped as he watched Desiree slowly retreat several paces. She moved back to stand almost shoulder to shoulder with two more familiar figures, a small girl and an old man, both of whom offered Klaus smiles that were tinged with sadness and yet understanding.

"It will be over soon, my cher," Desiree murmured kindly, clasping her hands in front of her bodice as she resolved to wait. Klaus shook his head, trying to clear his vision of the impossible images standing before him. The witch droned on and on from her position nearer the mouth of the alley, pouring out her fury and scorn despite the fact it was apparent that Klaus was no longer listening.

"You… can't… be…" Klaus choked out in a whisper, screwing his eyes closed. Upon reopening them, the apparitions had vanished and all that remained was the dank brick wall.

"All that talk floating around the quarter about the big, bad hybrid," the witch hissed, her tone ugly and barbaric, "I guess that's just what it was, hey? All. Talk."

Suddenly, the girl let out a startled squeak and her entire body grew rigid as she was lifted from the floor, the toes of her boots barely scraping the ground. Her brown eyes grew wide and overshadowed with fear, whilst strong fingers dug into the flesh at the back of her neck.

"Not entirely," Hayley whispered, her yellow eyes glowing like an eerie beacon in the blackness. She buried her fangs into the girl's jugular with surprising accuracy and enthusiasm, causing rivulets of crimson to begin running down the witch's blouse. The teen struggled to scream, her mouth open wide, but it was all over too soon for her to truly react. Hayley dropped the spent corpse as though nothing were of less consequence to her, and quickly stepped over it.

"Klaus?" she demanded, rushing to the other hybrid's side and rolling him onto his back in order to survey his injuries. When she saw the colour beginning to return to his cheeks, she let out a sigh of relief and sat back on her heels, wiping the fresh blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. She was a hybrid now, barely hours old just like their daughter, but she seemed to be relishing her new existence with a kind of enthusiasm that Klaus would never have dreamed possible. Perhaps it was her anger at the lot that had been dealt to them or merely the way her own grief for the loss of their child had manifested, but Klaus found himself unable to draw his eyes away from the woman's face.

"What the hell happened here?" Hayley demanded, returning her gaze to Klaus as he struggled into a sitting position. "You could have taken her with one hand tied behind your back, Klaus."

Hayley offered him her arm, helping him to lean against the wall in a bid to prop him up, but she was beyond stunned when he laid his head gently on her shoulder. His breath drifted across her cheek and she immediately smelled the potent alcohol.

"I… I could not bear it…" Klaus whispered in reply, his voice hoarse and laden with unspoken emotions. Hayley swallowed down her tears loudly and, in the darkness, she slipped her hand inside Klaus', a gesture of solidarity in their plight. In the forefront of Hayley's mind was a pair of brilliant blue eyes and tiny rosebud lips; the face of the daughter she had held only once, leaving her with a broken heart and empty arms. If anyone understood Klaus' pain, it was Hayley.

"It doesn't seem real," Hayley agreed quietly, her eyes drifting to the body of the witch she had murdered, not even her first kill of the evening. "This morning she was safe, inside of me, and now… she..."

The two fell silent and, as the tears began to trickle down Klaus' cheeks, Hayley squeezed his hand. Although they knew their child would never want for anything in Rebekah's care, there could be no consolation for the enormous hole her absence had blasted in their lives.

"All night I've been thinking… if only I got to hold her longer… just a second longer… maybe it wouldn't hurt this bad," Hayley confessed, inclining her body slightly towards Klaus. He nodded but did not reply, his ability to speak coherently having apparently been scrambled by not only the witch he had encountered but also by the copious amount of alcohol he had consumed.

Hayley curled her knees into her chest and turned to look at Klaus, cupping his chin in her hand and forcing him to meet her gaze. The way his eyes gleamed in the moonlight with unshed tears tore at Hayley from the inside but she affixed a resolute expression upon her face.

"But this… this isn't the way," Hayley said firmly, her arched brow leaving no room for argument. "You don't get to bail on us like this. Our daughter needs you. Elijah needs you. Marcel needs you, but most of all I… damn it, Klaus..."

She trailed off, her eyes drifting to her fingernails, now broken and caked in the blood of her victims. A tiny flutter of fear inside her chest prevented her from continuing, from admitting what had become apparent over the last few months to everyone aside from Klaus.

This time, Klaus was the one reaching out across the darkness and the expanse between them, the back of his hand grazing the apple of Hayley's cheek. She closed her eyes and her own tears finally began to descend with such force that she immediately gasped for air.

"I need you too…" Klaus whispered, the ghost of a smile playing across his lips, "my little wolf."

And so there in the shadows of the place he had been so many times before, the place where over the years he had felt compelled to allow his waning humanity to shine through, Niklaus held the mother of his child tight to his chest as she wept.

In that one moment, he recalled so many things; a tattered bonnet and a coffin, a frightened child and an ancient lullaby, a hunter's mark and a promise, and the death of a woman who had loved he and their babe so much, she had returned from the grave to be with them.

Klaus had played the knight in shining armour for so long; sometimes victorious, sometimes not, but stalwart without fail. Finally, Klaus had come to realise that perhaps he might need a saviour of his own and, just perhaps, he had already found one- in a pair of hazel eyes and a pair of blue.

After all, everybody needs saving sometimes, and thousand year old hybrids are no exception.

THE END