Never been much of a fan of the fact that Elijah didn't go to see Katherine on her death bed. It cheapened him in my opinion and so I've written a very short piece on it whilst I'm struggling with the next chapters of my other stories.
He had lived one thousand years, five hundred of which spent in a kind of hollow equilibrium. Unknown to him during those centuries of nothingness, but brought to a unembellished comprehension of their vacantness when he looked into her eyes and saw for the first time that addictive regard only she was capable of bestowing upon his tarnished soul. In that look lay his redemption.
Had he recognized it then, had he known what it would cost him to lose it - to lose her - things might have ended differently.
He might have been other than he now was.
It was that look he had spent five hundred years chasing and though he had eventually captured her it was something that could not be regained. It, much like he thought himself, was lost forever.
And so it was that just when his temperamental brother finally granted him leave to be with the woman he had loved so many lifetimes it might as well be called forever he turned from her. Turned from those eyes so different than the ones that made him feel as though all could be forgiven and turned his focus on that elevated heartbeat in the belly of a wolf. With that thumping announcement of life, he felt as though the Gods had turned their eyes back upon those deemed Godless.
In Niklaus' ear he enthused tales of redemption and a family reborn, but in the depths of his soul it was his own redemption that he hoped for. He hoped that this child might look upon him and see something other the Original monster that others viewed. He wanted something pure, something innocent, and yet still Mikaelson. Something apart and yet still of his blood.
He turned from her as he had done that time before and as before he lost, but nearly as much as she did.
In his new home, with his family and the wolf Hayley who was to birth his deliverance, word reached him of her fate. Returned to the human state she fought so hard to escape, he wanted so to go to her but he refrained. Human or not she would never look at him as though he were some miraculous savior ever again and having left her to a fate he knew she could only despise her eyes would surely look upon him with nothing but contempt.
He did the only thing he could do, he pushed her from his mind, focused upon protecting the one of them that could ever be innocent from their many enemies.
Still, he did not tell his brother who might have found a use for a human doppelganger. He was at least incapable of that.
Whilst his brother worked on reclaiming his Kingdom, he spent his time watching over the wolf and gradually he found himself seeing Hayley as more than just an incubator. There were parallels to the love he now considered for all intents and purposes to be lost, for even if she did not hate him for abandoning her once again, as a human her time upon the earth was limited and nothing could be done to change that.
Hayley was the mother of his brother's unborn child as opposed to the doppelganger required to unleash his brother's wolf. Neither woman viewed by his brother as a romantic partner, both stripped down of all but what use they could be to him. Her the doppelganger, an enemy, Hayley the wolf more neutral and though there was something distinctly unsavory in pursuing the mother of your own brother's child in the right light Hayley's hair was just the right color. In the moonlight, her hazel eyes could almost be mistaken for the right shade of brown. He could find himself captivated.
The wolf wasn't her, could never be, but Hayley looked at him with big round eyes that seemed to radiate trust and acceptance. Hayley looked at him as only one who he hadn't yet betrayed could and he wanted that. And so, he wanted her.
Despite it all, or more likely because of it. He willed himself to forget, to live as though she had never existed, and for a while he could almost believe that that was the case. He could almost believe there were no such things as doppelgangers.
But then she was dying and his brother was all kinds of elated. Niklaus announced, before he had even time to absorb the news, he was off to delight in her final moments and Rebekah who had always hated all things doppelganger announced she would go with him. There was no choice but to remain in New Orleans – one of them had to, Hayley could not be left unprotected. He had no choice, he told himself, and so told them in an ever so even tone of voice.
Utterly unmoved.
Hadn't he forgotten her existence after all?
Truth was, even had his siblings not gotten in first, he would not have gone.
To believe that she would look upon him with scorn were they ever to cross paths once more was one thing. To actually have to face such a thing was another. He did not believe it was within him to ever recover from such a thing. Were she to hate him, to condemn him or worse still to look upon him with all the disinterest of a stranger it would destroy him. The suits he wore not as a uniform or a remembrance of a bygone age of chivalry and propriety but as armor could not safeguard his soul from such a thing as her disdain.
He was a coward.
And so he stayed in New Orleans pretending that the child of his brother would heal his tattered soul, that the wolf that carried her had the capacity to be all he might wish for in a partner. He consoled himself with thoughts of a better future, of a day when he would bury the past with an enviable present.
At times he could almost believe it.
Even though he could not bear to even think her name.
When his younger siblings returned, both with wide smiles upon their lips he did not ask what had occurred in Mystic Falls. He did not ask if she had asked about him. He could not bear to think that in her final hours she had not spared him so much as single a thought.
Not knowing was better.
In the unknown dwelt possibility.
In the unknown he might have gone to her and she might have gifted him that look one final time.
In the unknown she might have loved him forever.
As he would her.
However much he wished otherwise.