tidings of comfort and joy
Synopsis: For her first family Christmas, Elijah gives Freya a present. Missing scene for 3x09.
Freya looks up when she hears someone knocking on her open door. It's Elijah, hand still held up where his knuckles had rapped against the wood.
"Do you have a moment?" he asks.
"I was just finding some herbs for Rebekah," she says. "What is it?"
"This won't take but a minute," he assures her as he enters the room and brings forth something from behind his back.
A present. Wrapped in burgundy-red paper and tastefully decorated with an elegant bow. Freya opens her mouth, but finds herself speechless.
Elijah seems to misinterpret her expression as he starts to explain. "Our family does not exactly have a tradition of giving presents. Most of the gifts downstairs will be for Hope, but I wanted you to have this before the party."
He holds out the present for her and still struggling to find words, she accepts it.
The present is solid and heavy in her hands. The shape makes her suspect a book of some kind, but she can't know for sure until she sets it down on her dresser and unties the bow. Carefully folding away the wrap-paper reveals a book bound in dark-red leather. On the front, engraved with gold, is her name.
Elijah comes to stand at her shoulder, looking with her as she traces the runes she had learned to read and write as a child, so very long ago. He must have had this made especially for her. With trembling hands, she opens the book at the front page only to find her name again, this time in Roman letters and elegantly handwritten.
Then she flips ahead a few pages, and is met with smiling faces that look strangely familiar.
She gasps as she realises what she is looking at. When she finds her voice her words still come out in a whisper. "Are these..."
"Niklaus has a good memory," Elijah answers her unfinished query. "He drew sketches of our family over the centuries. Most have been lost over time, but I had these retrieved from former properties and scanned."
Freya touches the laminated paper of the photo. In the sketch a long-haired teenager carries an equally dark-haired boy on his back. She can't help but marvel for a short moment at the detail of the art where the boy clings with his fist to the older boy's tunic. They are both smiling, happy grins on their faces as they look up.
"Kol and Henrik," Elijah informs her, fondness in his voice.
Freya traces the paper lightly. She can clearly see traces of Elijah in both boys. She'd seen Kol back in 1914 and she can picture how the teen in the drawing would have looked when he grew older.
Henrik has Finn's nose.
She is never going to meet her youngest brother. She's known that of course, he died so many centuries ago, even before her siblings became vampires. And yet to see his face here, to see the evidence that he'd once existed, that her siblings might have happy memories of him where she had none...
It is a strange thing, to mourn someone you never really knew.
"What was he like?" she asks, suddenly desperately curious.
Elijah is silent for a long moment. When she looks up he has a faraway look in his eyes.
"He was kind," her brother finally answers. "Curious. He loved flowers."
"Flowers?" Somehow, she had not expected that.
Elijah smiles briefly as he glances back at her. "As a small child, he would gather them for our sister, who would allow him to help her braid them into her hair. Rebekah was the closest in age to Henrik, although even she was in her early teens by then."
She tries to picture the boy in the drawing, with his bright smile, running up to his sister and showing her the flowers he'd plucked just for her. Somehow, his face becomes more and more like Finn's in her mind.
"You may have seen some of him when you got a look into my mind during the Eva Sinclair debacle," Elijah says.
"I didn't see all that much," she admits. "Just glimpses mostly."
Elijah hums. "I'm not surprised."
She sends him a puzzled look.
His lip quirk up into a half-smile. "I have been alive for a long time, Freya. A thousand years of memories... It would have been unlikely for you to have been able to take in all of them. You'd have focused on recent events most of all in any case."
"You don't mind?"
"It was for a good cause. While I'd prefer not to have anyone in my mind in such a way, even someone of my own blood, it was necessary to save Rebekah."
"I saw... a memory. Of Niklaus," she says. "From back when you were all still children."
"I see." Elijah's eyes darken as his face turns grave. "As you must know by now, Niklaus did not have the best childhood."
She looks back at the drawing, the two brothers laughing. Caught in this moment of joy forever by the fine charcoal sketches of their older brother.
"Did you?" she asks before she can stop herself.
Elijah remains silent.
"In the memory he was so alone," she whispers, tracing the lines of the drawing with her finger. "He cried out for you all in his dreams."
When she looks up again, Elijah's eyes are fixed on the album, his face unreadable.
"Perhaps it's best to leave the far past behind for now and focus more recent happiness," he says, carefully reaching out to turn a substantial number of pages, and tilting the book back at her so she can see.
It's clear that this is a topic he'd like to avoid. She can imagine why. Talk of her siblings' childhood seems to lead directly to their father, and she still doesn't know what to think about that. The loving father she remembers from what little memories she has left of her earliest years seems a world away from the monster her siblings regard him as.
Elijah likely has the right of it, so she lets him change the topic without further comment and focuses on the pictures he's showing her.
She draws a sharp breath.
On the page her own face is smiling back at her, with her little niece held securely in her arms. Hope wears a light-green shirt and has chocolate stains all around her mouth but looks happy. Freya can remember the exact moment this picture had been taken.
It had been over the summer when Hope had taken her first unassisted steps. Klaus had sent for cake to celebrate and Hope had been fussy but eager enough to try the chocolate cake. She'd even thrown some of it at her father, taking him off-guard. Klaus' surprised face had delighted Hope even further and she'd giggled mischievously.
Freya had laughed herself dizzy that day, filled with a strange sense of joy she had never experienced before.
"I thought these were taken for Hayley," she finally says.
"Most of them, yes. But I felt it appropriate to gift some of them to you as well. Niklaus concurred."
"He took this one?" Freya asks, finding a picture of her and Elijah in the study on the next page. In it, Elijah is listening attentively as she points to something in her grimoire, her own face animated as she talks.
"Apparently so."
It makes her feel warm inside, to be part of this album, to have her brother take a photo of her the same way he had so lovingly sketched his younger brothers once upon a time.
"Did I hear my name?" A voice calls from the doorway.
It is Klaus, leaning against the doorpost, already dressed in a light-blue shirt for the party later tonight.
"Speak of the devil..." Elijah says dryly. He doesn't sound too surprised at their brother's sudden appearance, or perhaps he's just hiding it well.
She smiles, and at the door Klaus smirks as well.
"Am I the devil, then?" he asks.
"Well, if the shoe fits," Elijah says in the same dry tone.
Klaus laughs. "So are you opening presents already?" he asks. "Far be it for me to criticise, but I rather thought part of the fun was the waiting."
"Just the one," Elijah says.
"Elijah was just showing me the photo album," Freya tells him. "He said you contributed some of the photos and drawings as well?"
Klaus' eyes flick to Elijah. "You didn't want to wait for the party?"
Elijah shrugs, a slight movement of the shoulders. "It seemed more fitting to do it in private."
"As opposed to at our very public Christmas party? We're hardly hosting a society event," Klaus comments with a raised eyebrow, before continuing, "but no matter." He turns back to Freya. "You like them, then?"
"It's a wonderful present," Freya replies, smiling. "Thank you."
Her brother just inclines his head at her, but he appears pleased. Then, he glances back at Elijah. "I came to say that Cami was asking after you. She didn't say what it was about."
Elijah raises his eyebrows slightly, but nods. "I'll be along shortly."
"I'll let her know," Klaus says, and with that he leaves again, as swiftly as he'd come.
Freya watches him as he turns the corner of the hallway. "You seem to be getting along better," she comments lightly.
It might be dangerous, to draw attention to the fact when her brothers' truce still feels so very fragile, but she also can't help being glad at the decrease in tension.
"It is Christmas after all," Elijah says. "No doubt we will be back at each other's throats soon enough."
"I'd rather you weren't," she says, reaching up and kissing his cheek. "Thank you for the album, brother."
He smiles warmly at her. "You're quite welcome."
Her eyes are drawn back to the opened pages. She's curious about the other photos and still in a state of surprised wonder that she now owns her own family photo album.
Her heart swells with warmth at the notion, at being so wanted in the family she has dreamed of for so long.
"Is it ordered chronologically?" she asks, flipping past the picture of that summer.
"Mostly, yes. Some drawings are obviously made later or were hard to place exactly."
The pages she is looking at now are only half-way through the book. "The rest can't be all pictures," she says, looking up at him in unvoiced question.
"The last few pages are for you," Elijah tells her, serious eyes meeting hers. "For happy memories yet to come."
She has to blink hard, her throat suddenly tight as she turns back to the album.
"We may not be able to make up for lost time," Elijah says beside her, his voice low, as she looks at a photo of herself sitting at the desk in the study. "But we can make new memories together going forward."
In the photograph she is fast asleep, having worked until late at night, when she had succumbed to sheer exhaustion. Finding her limits was new, after so many years of power from her link with Dahlia. Even now she has a tendency to push herself to the brink of exhaustion to get the task done, as she had done earlier today.
When she had woken up that morning with a blanket draped across her shoulders she had suspected Elijah. Now she wonders if perhaps it might have been her other brother who found her and then took this photo.
He'd never said a word about the pictures before.
Unfortunately, as much as she would like to bask in this feeling of belonging, she can't entirely ignore the recent events and the crisis their family is currently facing.
"Despite recent unpleasantness?" she asks.
Elijah's eyes are hard. "After tonight we will hunt down Tristan and his little cronies. This assassination attempt was a clear declaration of war. It cannot go unanswered."
"And the prophecy? It said you would fall within the year, one by friend, one by foe, and one by family."
Part of her still wishes she could unsee what she saw that day, stop the words from leaving her mouth. But prophecies don't always need to be heard or seen to have power, and now she finds it hard to forget the danger her siblings are it.
"We will defeat the prophecy," Elijah says, gently taking the album from her and closing it, before handing it back.
Freya rests her hand on the dark-red leather, feeling the runes spelling her name beneath her fingers.
Elijah puts a hand on hers, squeezing her fingers gently. "And if not... then perhaps after you will value the album even more," he simply says.
"Don't say that." The very idea of it chills her to the bone. "I won't let any of you die."
"I meant what I said earlier today," Elijah says, his eyes intent. "None of us wish to lose you either, sister."
"Nor do I want to lose you."
They look at each other for a long moment, neither one willing to give. Elijah's dark-brown eyes meet hers steadily. Finally, when the moment becomes strangely tense, she relents.
"I should get back to Rebekah," she murmurs, glancing back at the book.
"Of course," Elijah says, stepping back. "I'll go see what Camille needs."
He makes a move as if he is about to reach out to her, then strokes a hand down the front of his jacket, pulling it straight.
"Elijah," she calls as he is about to leave. It doesn't feel right to end the conversation on this note, not after the present he gave her. Elijah is right, it is Christmas, and she doesn't want there to be tension between her and her siblings when she is about to attend her first family party.
Elijah turns back to look at her in question.
"Thank you," she says, trying to convey through her tone alone how much it means to her. "It's a perfect gift."
Some of the tenseness seems to flow from Elijah's shoulders as he turns back fully. "You are part of this family now, Freya," he says, then quirks his lips. "We may not always be the most adept at showing it, but the sentiment is no less true."
She smiles back at him.
"I am glad you found us," Elijah adds. "Even if it did take a thousand years."
With that, he nods at her briefly and leaves the room.
Freya looks back down at the photo album, the best Christmas present she ever received, and smiles.
Yes, she thinks, so am I, brother.
A/N: Merry Christmas!
This fic has been in the works for a long time, but it seemed fitting to finally finish it today. Any comments or reviews would be much appreciated!