Author's Note: An angsty one shot of those left to grieve after Hayley's death. I do not own The Originals or any of the characters. The poem is an English translation of Pablo Neruda's poem "Si Tu Me Olvidas"-If You Forget Me.
If You Forget Me
Naomi Elia Rebel Mikaelson clutched her loose sweater closer around her body as she walked down the stairs. Not because she was cold, or rather not because the house was cold. The coldness she felt came from inside her, a cold, numb emptiness inside spreading outward from her body. Her mother, Hayley was dead. Her beautiful, loving mother, fierce and loving and kind, and strong who blazed like the stars in the sky.
It was a week after they had lost her, Hayley a moment too slow to elude the lone wolf, hyped up with witch magic. No revenge, or war for a city, no interspecies conflict that brought a city to its knees. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, an accident, and in a moment an entire family was devastated.
Naomi turned into the front sitting room in what was still called the old plantation house, but the place she simply knew for twenty years as home. She stopped as she saw her father pacing up and down the carpet, talking to her Aunt Bex. Rebecca had come as soon as she heard, and even now, her eyes remained haunted in her lovely face.
"Hello" Naomi whispered, watching as both heads snapped towards her. They had been so engrossed in their discussion that they had not heard her come down. She avoided the anguished look in her father's eyes, as he sought to make contact with hers, but walked up to him, giving him a soft hug. Tears burned her eyes as he held her as if she would break, and she smiled bravely and asked them what they were talking about.
Rebecca answered, "We invited a few people over for dinner. Jackson and a few of the other Crescents, Davina and Josh…"
"But only if you want to, sweetheart" Klaus interrupted with a glare at his sister.
"We didn't have a wake and some of the others who loved your mother wanted to get together and talk about her." Rebecca continued. "The funeral wasn't…it wasn't the time for that. None of us could have done that."
Naomi silently agreed. The funeral that took place the day after was agonizing for all of them. Not that the agony was gone, she thought. It lived and breathed in her like a parasite.
"It's ok" she managed to say, sure her smile would crack and break her face, so stiff and cold the movement was. "Mom would probably have wanted that".
"Where's Uncle Elijah?" she asked, wondering why he was not here with them. But really not surprised.
Rebecca and Klaus glanced at each other, and then Rebecca answered, "He is down by the grave." The word again floated in the air between all of them.
"I'll go look for him" Naomi suggested, wanting to get out of the stillness of the house, which seemed like a large entity waiting for something that would never come. Or someone. She had avoided the grave, not liking to think of her mother under the earth, but she wanted to see her uncle. In the end, she knew, they were the two with the hearts most broken. The two who were most lost and alone.
Naomi left the house through the kitchen and walked down the path to the back of the house, looking at but not quite seeing the trees and their falling leaves, a smell in the air that reminded her of games of hide and seek in the trees, lying on the ground and looking at the moon. She came to the first memorial. Esther, her grandmother, Finn, Kol even young Henrik. Family she never knew, but ones she knew her father and his siblings still mourned.
She saw her uncle where she knew he would be. Sitting on a gilded bench they had placed near where her mother lay, under a sprawling tree, and close to the forest that called to her, even though she could control her turns. It was a beautiful spot, and Naomi felt her knees almost buckle as she thought of her mother lying in that space.
She knew Elijah had surely heard her crunching footsteps. He was sitting, in another sharp suit, posture erect, with a book in his hand. He turned as she came closer, and a ghostly smile covered his face, startling in its emptiness.
"What are you doing?" Naomi asked.
"I'm reading a poem that your mother loved" Elijah replied and for a second she thought she saw a spark of something, of life, behind his dark eyes"
Naomi smiled sadly. Her mother didn't really like poetry per se, but she loved when Elijah read to her. She used to laugh and say that he could read her anything and she would listen. She had loved his voice, his use of words. She had loved him.
"Dad and Aunt Bex said that the others are coming over for dinner tonight"
Elijah nodded disinterestedly, but his eyes searched mine carefully and I knew he was wondering if I was fine with it. "It's ok" I reassured him. "Mom would have loved it".
"There was a time when she thought it was horrible to throw a party for a dead person" He reminisced, that spark again reappearing briefly.
'What changed her mind? I asked curiously. Elijah knew Hayley in ways no one else did.
"Life. She was a young woman when she had you, and with the wars in the city, she lost so many friends. She learned how brief and yet brilliant life could be." Elijah added bitterly. I heard the unspoken words. The endless years that lay before him. And my mother gone too quickly.
Tears filled my eyes again, and this time they rolled unrestrained down my face. My heart bled again, for me, for a young frightened Hayley, for an older Hayley, for Elijah and his thousand years and counting.
I stepped forward to him, and lay my head against his, kissing his forehead like he had done for me a million times. My life so far flashed before my eyes, broken toys that he helped fix, he and Mom laughing together in the kitchen, dancing in the dark, he and Daddy and Rebecca playing with me in the forest. Always and forever, and a thousand rents of time and space.
He smiled at me sadly as I stepped away from him. I wondered if my thoughts had transferred themselves to him. I decided to leave him alone with his memories.
As I returned up the path, I heard him reciting words that brought the tears again. He was right. My mother did love this one.
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you, little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me,
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.