An associate of mine is obsessed with Haylijah. I wrote this to shatter her heart more or less upon her request. Warning, this is an AU piece. Also, I've seen all of three episodes of The Originals, so the characters are bound to be off-base. For that, I apologize.
Something felt wrong as soon as she walked in. She couldn't place her finger on it, but as Hayley stepped into the apartment she'd just started sharing with her boyfriend of two years, she knew something wasn't right. Nothing appeared out of place, but the silence that seemed to envelope the apartment wasn't the peaceful one she was familiar with, either. It was tense. Ominous.
"Elijah?" called Hayley, dread churning in her stomach as she moved into the living room of the apartment. "You home?"
Almost as soon as she stepped into the room, she spotted Elijah, leaning forward with his elbows pressed into his knees as he stared at the coffee table. The bones and muscles of his arms created small creases in the otherwise crisp fabric, leaving it wrinkled and imperfect. His hair was equally disheveled, as if he'd run his fingers through the short, dark strands repeatedly. Even his shirt was out of order- sleeves rolled to his elbows and untucked in places. Whatever had his attention was clearly perturbing him; it was the only explanation she had for his unkempt appearance. Elijah never allowed his appearance to fall into disarray like this save when he was distracted.
"Elijah?" repeated Hayley, crossing the room towards where he sat. His eyes shot up before she reached him, narrowing in displeasure and distrust. Immediately, she balked. Why was he looking at her like that? The last time she saw that look, his brother had screwed him over, again, and taken off with several family heirlooms, likely to finance his addictions or felonious activities. She'd never seen that look directed at her though, and she never wanted to see it directed her way again. "Everything okay?"
"That depends," replied Elijah slowly, his voice distant and dead as he picked up whatever it was he'd been looking at and flicked it across the coffee table. It bounced faintly off the surface before sliding over the edge and fluttering to the ground at her feet. "Define 'okay'."
Shooting Elijah a raised eyebrow, she knelt to retrieve the object, a photograph she realized, and flipped it over so she could see whatever it was that had clearly upset Elijah. Almost instantly, her stomach dropped out. Bile rose in her throat as she stared at the image held in fingers that were rapidly beginning to quake. It was such an old image, she couldn't image where it came from or how it had lasted this long. Well, that wasn't fair. The image was probably only five years old. It wasn't hers though, that much she definitely knew. She'd disposed of all evidence of that particular incident years ago; it had been too painful to keep anything related to that period of her life around. It had been during that time that she'd possibly made the biggest mistake of her life. A mistake she could never undo.
A mistake that was apparently coming back to haunt her. As she stared at the ultrasound image in her hand, heart pounding and stomach churning, one question roared through her head like a wolf's howl shattering the silence of a forest night. "Where did you get this."
"My brother, Klaus, sent it to me," stated Elijah, anger and betrayal lacing through his voice. "Apparently, he saw a photo of us on a social media site and felt you looked familiar. It took him a bit, but he managed to recall the woman he'd met in a club and become intimate with. Several times. He also recalled her approaching him about a baby, one she claimed was his." The words were calm, but carried a bite that tore through to her core. She'd tried so hard to forget about that time of her life. The mistakes she'd made back then. "A child I have never seen and you have never mentioned." Taking a deep breath, his voice dropped several octaves, pleading eyes turning up towards her. "Hayley, tell me he's lying. Tell me he remembers wrong."
Her eyes closed momentarily; closed against the pained look on his face and his pleading eyes. She could lie and tell him Klaus was wrong, and she knew he'd believe her. She could say it wasn't true and he'd take her words as truth. But she couldn't lie to him and she knew it. She loved Elijah; loved him far too much to lie like that. He put so much faith in her words, there was no way she could lie to him now. As painful as it would be to tell him this, she couldn't lie to him. "He's not wrong."
Smothering silence filled the room, making her chest tighten as fear curled through her body, paralyzing her. The image in her hands shook faintly, blurring as she examined the grainy photo. Her baby, her tiny daughter, was barely visible in the image, little more than a blob in the black and white blur of the ultrasound. The little girl she thought of almost every day. The child she'd given up, for her own good.
"Why didn't you tell me." There was so much pain in that one sentence, she thought it might break her heart.
She had seen the worst of Elijah, held him as he struggled through his own demons, his own past. He'd spilled his soul to her. And her own dark secret, the child she'd given up, his niece that she'd given away, had been always in the forefront of her mind. The child's name, Hope, had been on the tip of her tongue several times as she considered telling him about the little girl she'd given birth to that he would never get to know because she'd been too afraid to keep the child. Every time though, her throat had closed and she'd choked on the words. Every time she'd tried to tell him, thought about telling him, fear and pain had overcome her and she'd swallowed the words. Hope was her secret, her burden. Her daughter was a part of her, something she'd internalized for so long, she'd been unable to speak of her to anyone else. And Elijah, the man who wanted children so bad, the man who put family above everything else- how could she tell him that he had more family out there, given life by her, that he could never meet?
"I couldn't get the words out," admitted Hayley as she held the sonogram, eyes locked on the image, unable to rise to Elijah's own. "I gave her up, Elijah. I gave her up because I was afraid and I've carried that knowledge with me all this time. She was my daughter, and I gave her away."
The words brought back the bile and pain she'd felt immediately after she'd handed her daughter over to her new family. She'd gone home and thrown up almost immediately; cried and screamed because her heard felt like it was tearing itself apart. She knew rationally she couldn't handle being a mom; she'd never had a mom herself and didn't know the first thing about being a parent. And with Klaus denying the child, refusing to even acknowledge either her existence or that of her daughter, she'd felt trapped. Cornered. So she'd taken the best out she could fine, and regretted it every day. She'd done everything in her power to put her decision behind her, but her daughter's infant face, squished as she'd held her immediately after her birth, had haunted her mind incessantly since that day.
"I have told you the worst of my past," hissed Elijah, his anger crackling to the surface momentarily before he forced it back behind the barrier where he kept it locked away. "I told you everything, and you couldn't even tell me you'd slept with my brother?"
"It's a hard thing for me to still think about, Elijah," growled Hayley, her pain twisting to anger in that moment. He made it sound like she'd directly lied to him. Made it sound like she'd intended to keep his niece a secret from him for malicious reasons. There was no malice in her intentions though; just pain and fear that kept her quiet. He didn't know her pain; he knew nothing about her pain. "How am I supposed to talk about it when the thought of what I did back then makes me nauseous?"
Elijah shook his head slowly, standing carefully from the couch. The true extent of his dishevelment was apparent as he did, a reflection, she realized, of his internal state. This hurt him, too. Except it shouldn't, because it was her that had given up the child. He'd never met Hope, she had. She'd looked into her daughter's eyes as she lay, recovering, in the hospital and fell in love with the little girl. She was the one who had to watch two people walk away with her little girl, knowing she'd never see the child again.
He didn't deserve to feel pain over this. He had no clue how painful anything having to do with Hope still was for her. She still whispered 'happy birthday' to her daughter every year on the day of her birth, down to the exact minute her daughter had been born. She was the one who wondered every day how her daughter was doing. She was the one who missed Hope every day. Who regretted giving her daughter up every time she watched a mother pass with a child or saw young children run by.
"Besides, she wasn't your child," continued Hayley, anger bubbling up through the pain, searing her inside. "You didn't have to make the choice to give her up. You never held her. You never looked into her little face and knew you'd never see her again!" Shaking her head, Hayley turned away from him, anger overtaking her sense. "How dare you turn this around on me like I did something wrong!"
"I'm angry because you didn't tell me," stated Elijah, his voice calm and controlled. Detached. All it did was anger her further. "I'm angry because I had a niece, one you gave birth to, that you never bothered to tell me existed. I'm angry because you didn't trust me enough to tell me that you'd slept with my brother and given birth to his child."
"You're angry?" hissed Hayley, her vision bleeding red for a moment. One of her fists clenched, nails digging into her hand. He was angry with her? He had no right to be angry with her over this. "I have a right to keep some things private! And if you can't accept that, if you can't accept that I didn't tell you about Hope because I'm still hurting from what I did, then you obviously don't respect me and we have no right being together!"
"Hayley-" started Elijah, his voice changing from angry to concerned in that moment but she didn't care anymore. She was too angry, too hurt to care."
"No," snapped Hayley, shaking her head firmly. "No, Elijah. I can't do this. I can't be with you knowing you don't trust me or respect me enough to even consider the fact that this might still be an incredibly painful thing for me. You can't fix this like that. You don't understand what it means to give up a child. You can't understand what that means. If you did, then you would never be mad that I kept this from you. Hope is my memory. She's my daughter. She isn't yours! How could you ever know what it's like to give someone you love up like that! You don't know what it's like to lose someone who means that much to you!"
The blank look that slid of Elijah's face as her last words echoed through the room was like a blow to the stomach. Because he might not know what it was like to give up a child, but he knew what it was like to lose someone he loved. And she'd forgotten that. In the midst of her own anger and pain, she'd forgotten his.
Stepping around the table, face kept carefully blank, Elijah stopped immediately beside her. He leaned close, fingers brushing some of her hair aside to reveal her right ear, as he leaned close to her.
"I've lost you, Hayley," whispered Elijah, his breath brushing her ear gently. His words were like ice, sliding down her spine and edged with his pain and betrayal. His lips brushed her cheek, a soft, borderline chaste kiss, and then he was gone. She listened as his footsteps echoed through the apartment. Listened as the front door open softly and closed with a quiet click.
Silence descended upon the apartment immediately, a silence broken only by her soft sobs as she shattered into pieces.