A/N: PLEASE READ. This is not quite a "Hunchback of Notre-Dame" AU. Klaus isn't quite Quasimodo and Bonnie isn't quite Esmeralda but there's shades of Hugo's characters in both of them, I think. In order to tell this story I've had to take Notre-Dame out of the time and history we're familiar with into an alternate chronology, one that blends with TVD mythology somewhat and also remixes some of my favorite scenes from the Disney adaptation (yes, I said it, only God can judge me) as well as from Hugo's novel. The story of Qetisyah and Silas is referenced here (you should glance at the TVD wiki if you've forgotten it) as well as Ayanna, and Esther, and the Mikaelson children, but with some important differences: Bonnie is not a descendant of Qetsiyah and Ayanna, and Esther isn't the one who Bound Klaus' wolf. This is going to be a 4 chapter fic, quick and dirty if you will, and I've already written most of chapter 3 and 4. I feel really vulnerable about posting this, because I'm very emotionally attached to the themes and I'm going through a difficult and stressful period in my life, and I was worried that y'all would think I'm corny as hell lol. But in any case, do let me know your thoughts in the reviews. This fic was, as always, inspired also by the work of the many other wonderful writers who populate this fandom.
P.S: thefudge just posted a klonnie fic called "count the stars and you will know", and since it left me a wreck of feels I can't recommend it heartily enough for the rest of you.
Chapter 1: the witch's prayer
It began with a witch's prayer, as in the old stories.
It came ringing faintly down, past the stone stairways and wooden doors, past the iron cells with their skeletal prisoners, past the scurrying rats and pockets of filth, down, down deep into the cellars of Notre-Dame.
"Bring them here
To the light of God
O Mother! Hear their cry"
The cells around him shuddered with the pitiful hums and hopeful cries of starved beasts bearing the facsimile of men and women, thinking a redeemer had come. They had been imprisoned here for centuries, weakened by the vermin blood they were forced to consume, stripped of the rings that once allowed them to walk in sunlight, bound by chains hewn from the rocks below the cathedral that had the power to stall their strength.
And he, he had been imprisoned even longer than they.
"Do not forget them
The outcasts,
The cursed ones
Mother, save your children!"
The prayer to Qetsiyah, Mother of Outcasts, had not been heard within the walls of Notre-Dame for over five hundred years.
The others thought of salvation. He thought only of blood, of his freedom, of shedding these chains and leaving this accursed place behind forever.
Niklaus, son of Mikael, who had one been Hybrid, now only a vampire, closed his eyes, let his ears talk to his mind, let sound and echo trace an image of the singer in the dark. A girl, slender and alone. The priests and witch-hunters were all abed at this hour. If they heard her scream, it would be too late.
"Bring them here
To the light of God
O Mother! Bring them here"
He shuffled to his feet, dragging his chains behind him. His gaolers had decided to allow him to roam the halls of the dungeons. His chains, unlike the others, were not bound to the rock but hung from his neck and ankles. They allowed him to roam as free as he liked within the walls of Notre-Dame.
It suited the Hunters' purposes for the others to see that even Niklaus Mikaelson, once mighty Hybrid, was imprisoned here. Once his fellow prisoners' hands had reached out through the iron bars of each cell as he passed, imploring him to set them free, praising his strength they had heard in stories. But, as the months passed and they saw how he shared their fate, the pleas turned sour, and it was spit now and curses they flung at him.
"Bring them here
To the light of God
O Mother! Save your children."
Niklaus walked through the corridors of filth and misery, past their cries and epithets, until he found the broken column that led to a hole in the rafters, through which he could climb and crawl with the rats, by the mighty bells whose ringing was used to drive the prisoners to madness, past the north rose window with its glass petals of light that Silas the Betrayer, who the priests now called The Faithful One, had built with his own hands, down to the vestibule where the small, clear voice was singing still.
"Mother, I too am starving,
I too shall come
Aye, I too shall come."
The scent of her blood nearly undid him, like a blow to his miserable, empty stomach. He could smell the magic in her. Foolish, reckless thing, to have wandered here, amid the Hunters and the beasts.
He dropped to the stone floor behind her quiet as a cat. She stood gazing up at the statue of Qetsiyah, who the priests now called the Penitent One, who had once been hailed Mother of Outcasts. He had been a boy when he first laid eyes upon that stone face with its jeweled crown and resolute mouth, the arms that sheltered a brave child. In those years, flowers and candles and perfume and coins were heaped at the feet of the Great Mother. Pilgrims from all corners of the world, fleeing witch hunters in their homelands, came here to thank her, to be sheltered. Even the priests and hunters who had turned Notre-Dame into a prison, who did not permit any of the Impure to walk its floors, even they did not dare defame her likeness.
But Niklaus thought no more of prayers and offerings. His every sense thrummed with one goal.
She turned, her face dappled in the candlelight, to see his fangs break his gums. A slip of a girl, barefoot, with a fine web of shawl clutched around thin shoulders.
If his visage - more beast than man, teeth bared and eyes black with hunger - frightened her, she did not scream. Instead, she bared her arm. There was a flash of silver from a cleverly hidden dagger, and then her skin was open and riverine with blood. Hunger roared through him. Spittle ran from his mouth.
He sank to his knees.
"Here," she beckoned gently, the way one offers bread to a beggar. "You are hungry, aren't you?"
He couldn't think, couldn't breathe. He could only crawl with his tongue on the silted blood, crawl to where it pooled at her feet, crawl, crawl to the mouth of the river.
He had not imagined the path to freedom like this, lowly and debased, reduced only to an animal need. He wanted to hate her for making it so.
But when his lips fastened around the blessed wound on her arm, he thought- he thought everything and nothing at all.
Her blood gushed down his throat. He tasted sunlight, and fields of wheat turning golden in the sun, and the waters of the Seine kissed by rain. He tasted the leather spine of a book in his hands, a long afternoon and fresh paint on a blank canvas.
He tasted the sky, the sky, the sky.
She moaned and swayed on her feet. He snatched her up savagely in his arms, his mouth fastening on her neck, and drank deep, deep enough to feel his bones shift.
At length her heartbeat began to slow. For one so young, so seeming-fragile, it had fought long and bravely.
Niklaus withdrew his fangs. She was cradled in his arms, his mouth ran with her blood. They were a perverse mirror of the statue that sheltered them. He had meant to leave her there, an innocent bled to death at Qetsiyah's feet, the cruel price of freedom.
The old pilgrims used to say that the Mother of Outcasts could see into your soul, make you anew, wash you clean. He had no such illusions any longer.
But the girl, this witch, had opened her veins for him. And so in Qetsiyah's shadow he opened his, dripped his blood over her lips.
When her wounds began to close he laid her gently at the feet of the Mother, smoothed her hair from her face. He wanted to remember her just as she was. Not in the distantly beautiful way of saints, no. Her light was too jagged, like broken glass. He wanted to remember her unfinished, and throat-clenchingly bright.
She raised a bloody hand to his face. "The others - below. Help them."
He heard the stir of footsteps and voices. The prisoners underground were clamoring, no doubt having caught the scent of her blood, the same blood that coursed through his veins.
"I am sorry, little witch."
He did not linger to see hope die in her face. He ran, tearing off his shackles as he did so. The magic in her blood pulsed inside him, like stars in a night sky he had not seen in centuries.
He ripped the bolts from the door and rushed outside, tore through the streets like a madman, drunk on fresh air, blinded by the sun.
The sun...
Dawn had come while he fed from the witch and lingered to heal her. Dawn shy and golden on his skin, leaving him unharmed.
Her blood had Unbound the hybrid curse. She had freed him of the last of his chains.
Bring them here
To the light of God
The bells pealed like thunder in the distance. He could hear the soldiers feet, marching, marching to Notre-Dame.
O Mother! Save your children
One prisoner lost, another gained.