This episode contains a musical cue. When you come upon the scene beginning with an asterisk (*), please go to bit . ly /pr1x07, which will take you to a YouTube video that will play a song chosen to accompany that scene.
Episode Seven: The Fine Idea You Crave
The Mikaelson siblings stand in a rough half-circle, all facing Hope. All of their eyes start to feel heavy on Hope's skin, so she gives a little wave. "Um. Hi."
Silence reigns, until Rebekah blurts out, "Your hair!"
Hope's hand flies to her head self-consciously. "What's wrong with—"
"No, it's lovely! It's just…so red!"
"Oh." Hope flushes a bit. "Um. Yeah."
Rebekah walks up to her niece and tucks her hair behind one ear lovingly. "And here I thought that blonde baby I'd cared for would take after her Auntie Bex. Well, there's no denying you're Nik's child, is there?"
Klaus laughs. "I did try to tell you."
Hope's answering smile is a sly, crooked thing, and Rebekah coos, "But she smiles just like her mother. Don't you agree, 'Lijah?"
Elijah answers with a vague hum of agreement, but his eyes aren't on his niece. Instead they're watching Hayley, who's still standing just beside Hope. Hayley manages to rip her own eyes away from him to address the room. "Why don't you all introduce yourselves? Hope only has my stories to go off of and, well, sometimes it was hard to figure out what to say."
Freya approaches Hope with a warm smile. "It's nice to have another witch in the family again. To tell the truth, it gets tiring, always being the one to save the day. I'm your aunt Freya." She hugs Hope, who hugs back tightly.
"I think I have a lot to learn from you," Hope says once the hug is over. "I've been looking forward to having a teacher, well, forever."
"It didn't seem like you needed much help when you took down all those witches by yourself. You're powerful." Hope's face colors again. "Well, you won't just have me." She gestures back to one of her brothers. "Kol may be a vampire once again, but there are few people as knowledgeable of worldly magics as your uncle."
Kol doesn't react to the compliment. Instead he asks bluntly, "Are we expected to remain in this bloody house forever, or can we leave now?"
His sisters shoot him disapproving glares, but Hope answers, "Well, the boundary spell is keeping everyone else out, but if one of us crosses outside, it'll break."
"Brilliant," Kol says sarcastically. "Just what I wanted after spending fifteen years trapped in a house with my siblings: to spend more time trapped in a house with my siblings."
"Kol!" Rebekah snaps reprovingly, but Kol storms off, disappearing into one of the compound's many hallways.
Freya sighs. "Our brother's horrible manners notwithstanding, he has a point. I'd like to put as much distance between us and Marcel Gerard as possible."
Hayley looks at her daughter, who's starting to go pale with exhaustion. "We can leave tomorrow. We're safe in here, and it's late. We could all use some rest."
Freya opens her mouth as if to argue, but a warning glance from Elijah keeps her quiet. He says, "Let us see if we can't make our family home a touch more livable, shall we? No doubt Marcel's…riff-raff have wrought some damage that might need addressing if we are to stay here for the night."
Hayley picks her way carefully through her old bedroom. The bed itself is more or less intact, still standing despite slashed sheets and scraped wood. The drawers of her dresser have been tossed about, one of them completely reduced to slivers, and the clothes she hadn't managed to pack in their escape fifteen years ago are now little more than rags. She stares at the full-length mirror, remembering standing in this very spot once upon a time in a long, white dress, and considers her reflection now, distorted and refracted in all of the cracks.
Now her hand is on a doorknob, and she hesitates. She doesn't want to know what they've done to that room, to the tiny nursery that her baby girl slept in. In her mind, it is unbroken, Hope sitting up in her crib, gnawing on a knight made of wood, gazing up in wonder at the skyline of this city that her father created just for her. She doesn't dare to dream that maybe Klaus's sirelings left this room alone, that maybe they spared this relic of innocence. Still, her hand is on the knob, not moving.
"Fifteen years, and you still look…"
Hayley turns to see Elijah leaning against the doorframe, a sly smile on face. She returns the look with a little eye roll. "You're one to talk."
Elijah chuckles, and then murmurs, "Fifteen years, and I never imagined how she'd look."
"She grew up fast. Too fast. Sometimes I forget that that tiny baby I fought and killed to protect is now…" She trails off.
Stepping into the room, Elijah finishes, "A strong, powerful, beautiful woman." He stops in front of Hayley. "Just like her mother."
Hayley's eyes roam his face, remembering, and then slide shut. "Elijah…I…"
Before she can finish her thought, there is a loud, metallic banging at the front gate, and ensuing commotion from the lower floors. Hayley and Elijah exchange a worried glance, and both make their way to the center of the compound.
The clanging catches Hope's attention from the kitchen. She weaves her way back into the courtyard, where Kol and Rebekah are already approaching the source of the noise.
Kol is the first to spy the visitor. "Oh goodie, I didn't realize that blood banks deliver now. What else have we missed?"
Hope ignores Rebekah as she chastises her brother, and instead heads down the small corridor toward the gate. Before her aunt can stop her, she finally gets close enough to see who it is. Her jaw drops. "River?"
Her girlfriend keeps glancing about herself furtively. "Hey, can you let me in? It's, like, creepy as hell out here."
From behind, Rebekah calls, "Hope, what is—"
"Hold on." Hope presses her hands against the invisible barrier surrounding the home and bows her head. After a few seconds, she whips her head back up and yanks the gate open. "C'mon, quick!" She grabs River by the hand and tugs her inside, slamming the gate shut behind them. "River—"
"Was that magic?" River asks, excited.
"Yes, but I could only keep the boundary spell down for a second—what the hell are you doing here?" She holds River at arm's length, checking her up and down. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
River brushes off Hope's concern. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine."
"River, what are you doing here? I told you this city isn't safe for wolves—"
"Girls!" Their attention is diverted to Rebekah, who's standing just inside the courtyard. "Why don't we come talk inside?"
Hope gently pulls River by the hand into the courtyard, where by now the entire family has gathered. All of them look surprised by the sudden appearance of a guest, and Kol is practically vibrating with anger.
Hayley's the first to speak. "River, what're you—"
"I had to come," River interrupts. "I just…it didn't feel right, me sitting at home while Hope was here doing…well, this."
"Well I for one have several questions," Kol begins sardonically. "The first is who the hell are you, and the second is why does she get to come in while the rest of us are forced to play prisoner in our own home?"
"Oh. Um." Hope gestures awkwardly between the group and River. "Everyone, this is River. My girlfriend." There's no reaction. "River, this is my family."
The silence is so thick it nearly suffocates Hope. After a while, River leans over to her and mutters, "Wow. Your family is white. I've seen Get Out, I know where this story goes."
A ripple of laughter breaks out, and suddenly the tension is eased. From the balcony above, Elijah calls down, "Actually, our family does have a rather unfortunate history of putting our…spirits into others people's bodies, including those of people of color."
"…Yeah, I gotta go," River says, and Hope laughs.
"Nonsense." Rebekah walks up to River and hooks their arms together. "Any friend of Hope's is a friend of ours. I think what we need is a family dinner."
"With what food?" Kol demands. "No one's lived in this dump for a decade and a half."
"Um, guys?" Hope jiggles her phone. "There's an app for that."
As they wait for someone to come bring them food, Hope leads River to the small bedroom she's claimed as her own for the night. The mattress is lying sideways on the box spring and the chest of drawers has been tipped over, but other than some shredded paper and ash on the floor, it's mostly been left alone. Still, River moves carefully, asking, "What happened here? Why is everything…"
"Trashed?" Hope sits on the askew bed, motioning for River to join her. "There was an angry mob. I'm told it wasn't the first in my family's history." She grabs River's hand. "What are you doing here?"
"You keep asking like that and I'm going to start to think that you're not happy to see me."
"This isn't funny, River. Not half an hour ago we were attacked by a ton of witches. If you had been out there—"
"But I wasn't." River smiles. "Don't you remember what I told you, back home?"
"What do you mean?"
"You're my pack. And you needed me."
Hope shakes her head. "But I didn't mean for you to follow me here! How did you even get here?"
"I hopped a Greyhound as soon as y'all left."
Hope makes a frustrated noise and kisses River. "That was stupid and dangerous and I love you."
"I love you too." River waggles her shoulders excitedly. "So?"
Hope's confused. "So…?"
"Your family! What're they like?"
"Oh. I don't really know. We haven't had a whole lot of time to get to know each other. But…they seem great. Well, Kol kind of seems like he hates me, but the others are cool." She sighs. "It's so weird. Like, I've been waiting for this my entire life, and all of a sudden, there they were, just standing in front of me. I had no idea what to say."
"Just give it time," River says wisely. "I'm sure they've been waiting to get to know you, too."
"We've been waiting a rather long time." The girls turn to see Rebekah standing in the door, a twinkle in her eye. "Come. Dinner's been left at the gate. The best jambalaya in the city. Let's eat."
The dining room is so packed with detritus that they could never hope to piece together a table, so instead they gather on the grand staircase, lounging on the steps and against pillars. They've divvied the jambalaya into whatever containers weren't smashed: mugs, saucepans, vases. Rebekah keeps trying to steal some of Elijah's with the ladle she's using as a utensil, but he deftly moves his chipped mixing bowl out of reach. There's a pile of empty blood bags by the entryway, the recently-woken vampires having gorged themselves on the supply Hayley brought all the way from Florida. Kol has mixed some in with the broth, so the sausage gleams red as he picks at it. On the floor, River shows off her skills with chopsticks, with Hope looking on, impressed.
Klaus stabs a piece of shrimp with the fork he had to bend back into its proper shape. "So, River." The room goes quiet. "You're dating my daughter."
Hope makes a face. "Well-spotted, Dad."
With an innocent shrug, Klaus says, "I don't think it's out of line to say I didn't expect to be reunited with my daughter after fifteen years and find her in a relationship with…" He trails off.
"With who?" River asks, eyebrows raised. "A girl? A werewolf? A black person?"
"Now hold on—" Klaus starts to protest, but River cuts him off. "No, I'm sorry, I just spent a day on a bus crossing three states just to come be with my girlfriend on the most important day of her life, but I'm getting the third degree?" Rebekah's face is alight with glee, watching the tense exchange as if it were a sporting match.
Hope jumps in. "Yeah, Dad, what the hell? River was one of the wolves who so graciously gave their venom to help cure your brothers. Maybe not pulling some patriarchal father-figure bull isn't too much to ask for, especially not after the way you treated her last night."
Klaus's face is unreadable. To Hayley he says, "This is your doing."
Hayley shrugs. "I raised her to think and stand up for herself. Clearly River's mother did the same." She smiles sideways at the girls. "I knew I liked her."
"Yes Nik, honestly." Rebekah abandons her mission to steal Elijah's food and walks over to the girls. "Your blustering has grown dull. Instead, I'd rather we all get to know the youngest Mikaelson, and her lovely girlfriend." She sits on the floor and asks, "What do you two like to do?"
"River's a runner," Hope says, gesturing at the girl in question with her soup spoon. "Best on the team back in high school."
"And Hope's art is stunning," River supplies. "You should see what she can do with charcoal."
"How did you meet?" Freya calls down from the balcony above, her legs dangling through the bent bars of the railing.
"We work together. River started training me on my first day. I thought she was the cutest person I had ever met."
Rebekah coos. "Aren't you two just delightful?"
"Can we put an end to the young love?" Kol moans. "I'm trying to eat."
Without looking up from his bowl, Elijah says, "Kol, if you can't behave yourself, I'm sure our sister would be more than happy to put you back into the Chambre de Chasse."
Kol slams his mug down onto the stair. "I rather wish she would, so that I might finally have some peace and quiet."
"Why are you being so particularly nasty?" Rebekah asks.
"I spent fifteen years trapped with you lot, always at my ear, and now here I sit, eating jambalaya out of a mug and listening to you all simper over teen romance. I want to peel my skin off."
"Hey!" Hayley's lip curls as she glares at Kol. "Don't talk like this in front of your niece. She's your family."
"True, which is more than can be said for—"
"Enough!" Elijah booms. "Kol, take a walk."
"Take a walk?" He jerks his head toward River. "Should I take our niece's bi—"
There's a loud crack that echoes horribly through the space, all the way up into the rafters, and Kol slumps over, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle. Just behind him, Klaus claps his hands once. "Well, that's just about enough of that." He picks up Kol's abandoned jambalaya. "Ah, more for me."
In some borrowed pajamas, River climbs into the bed, now properly aligned with its box spring. "How're you feeling?"
Hope doesn't answer for a while, just brushing the same section of her hair over and over. Finally she says, "They're…different."
"Well, Kol's a dick, I can tell you that much." She offers Hope a sympathetic smile. "But the rest of them seem great. I kind of want Rebekah to be my best friend."
Hope puts her brush down and slides under the covers. "Yeah. I guess I didn't think about the whole thousand-year family dynamic thing. Obviously it's going to be hard for me to just…fit in. I'm basically a newborn in the scale of the lives they've led."
"Yeah, but you're their family, not some random seventeen-year-old. They love you."
"I think Freya loves you. She could barely keep her eyes off you all night."
River flicks her hair over her shoulder dramatically. "What can I say? I make all the witches crazy."
Hope's laugh is bright and loud. "You're such a dork." She kisses her girlfriend. "C'mon. It's been a long day."
"Hey, all you had to do was fight off a couple of dozen witches trying to kill your family. I had to ride a bus for eight hours. Please don't minimize my struggle."
Leaning over to blow out the candle lighting the room, Hope rolls her eyes and says, "I'm leaving you."
Rebekah tracks Kol to the library, now little more than a trash heap. He's gripping the rail on the balcony, eyes shooting daggers at the street below. She stands inside, glaring at his back. "You're being a right and proper arse, you know that?"
"Bugger off, Rebekah."
"No."
Kol whips around. "I said, leave me alone."
"Why are you so bent on making everyone in this family resent you?" Rebekah snaps. "We are all trying to repair what has been broken for fifteen years, but it seems you can't be bothered."
"Well perhaps I can't. Perhaps I'm less interested in family bonding exercises and more interested in getting the bloody hell out of this sewer of a city."
"Our niece has waited her entire life to know us, but all she knows of you is your anger, your spite. Why are so cruel to her, and her girlfriend?" Kol glowers instead of answering. "You're lucky Nik doesn't bite you to teach you some manners, though I'm starting to think maybe he should."
Kol's hands curl into fists at his side. He stalks forward, getting into his sister's face. "I don't want to know her."
"Why?" Rebekah asks. "She's our family—"
"She reminds me of her!" Kol roars. "Is that what you want to hear, Rebekah? That when I look at her I can only think of the girl that was taken from me, by this family? Hope is…is smart and witty and powerful and artistic and when I look at her…the hole inside of me, the one still empty, after all these years…the ache is too much to bear, Rebekah."
Rebekah's face falls. "Kol…"
She reaches up to touch his face, but Kol smacks her hand away and spins around, marching back toward the balcony. "Do not pity me, sister."
"But I do!" Rebekah insists, following her brother. "I know this hurt well, Kol. And I know that if you had not spent the past fifteen years resenting us for being trapped in the Chambre de Chasse with you, perhaps we could have helped you better."
Kol leans heavily against the rail, his head bowed. He doesn't say anything for long time, both of them just standing in the thick summer air, listening to the symphony of cicadas. Finally, Kol whispers, "I loved her."
Rebekah loops her arm through one of Kol's and tips her head onto his shoulder. "I know."
*Elijah finds her on the balcony of her old bedroom, staring down at the street below. It's late, so there are only a few stragglers left milling about, half-empty bottles in hand. He stops beside her, sliding his hands into his pockets. "How thoughtful of Hope to include these balconies in her boundary spell."
Hayley smiles warmly and hums in agreement. "Hope loves balconies. Every time we moved I'd try to find us a place with one if I could. She's spent hours on them, reading, doing homework, practicing magic…" She trails off.
"Quite the young woman you've raised," Elijah comments.
"She's perfect. This life…it wasn't what I wanted for her, but I am so lucky to have been able to be with her, to see her become this strong, smart, capable person I love."
"Yes, well, among my many regrets is my inability to watch her grow, as you did."
The smile fades from Hayley's face. "Elijah…"
"No, please." He turns to face her. "Don't misunderstand me. I do not in any way blame you for my time in the Chambre de Chasse. It was my choices that led us to that point, mine and my siblings'. I simply mean to say…" He sighs, picks up her hand from the railing and brings it to his lips. "I wish more than anything that I could have been there, by your side."
Hayley's eyes begin to prick, and she looks away for a moment to compose herself. "Elijah, I…" She takes her hand back and turns so that she is now leaning back against the railing. "There's something I need to tell you." Elijah tilts his head, his face open and attentive. Hayley takes a deep breath and begins.
"For the past fifteen years, Hope and I have moved around, all over the country. Every six months or so, it was off to somewhere new. Hope never went school, she—she did everything online. And of course she was adaptable, never complained once, because she's the most amazing kid in the world, but she never…she never really had friends, a—a community.
"It took me two years to find the cure for Freya's poison, another three and a half for the spell to get rid of Rebekah's hex. And then it was just a matter of finding all the venoms for the cure for you and Kol." She pauses, works the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other. "Hope was nine when I found out the Malraux line was extinct. Felt like my world just…fell apart. I spent the next eight years searching, following every lead I could find.
"And then we were in Tallahassee, and Hope had a job and a girlfriend, and we were happy. My final lead didn't pan out, and I had a choice to make. I could pack us up, move us god knows where else, with no game plan…or we could stay. Build our lives in one place for the first time since Hope was born."
Hayley's voice starts to waver. "The night…the night Hope left Florida to come here, to rescue Klaus…I went up into the attic, where we had been keeping all of your coffins, and I opened yours, and I looked at you." Her face crumples, stray tears tracking down her nose. She speaks with shuddering breaths. "And I told you that I was moving on. I told you that—that I couldn't keep looking." She finally looks up at his expressionless face, her eyes shiny with tears. "I gave up on you, Elijah. I gave up on you and I will never, ever—"
She's silenced by Elijah's lips on hers. His hands are strong on her face, warm and sure. She leans into him, her own hands coming up to rest on his arms. After a full minute, Elijah ends the kiss, letting one hand fall to her waist as the other rests on the side of her neck. He presses his forehead against hers as they catch their breath. "Listen to me," he whispers, his voice deep and gravelly. "You will never have to apologize to me for the sacrifices you have made for the sake of this family. My truest regret is that the life you were forced to endure with your daughter was all in the name of rescuing us. Do you think my love for you would wane if you were to choose her over us, over me? All I have ever wanted, from the moment I set eyes on you, is your happiness, wherever you might find it."
Hayley brings a hand up to cup Elijah's cheek. "I'm happy with you." She kisses him, pulling his face down to meet hers. He secures an arm around her waist and lifts her up, and she steadies herself by taking his face in both of her hands. Suddenly, they're by the bed, and Elijah is laying her down. She sits up, fingers making quick work of the buttons of his shirt. He rips his tie off so that she can push the shirt off his shoulders, and once it's on the ground, he reaches for the hem of hers and tugs it over her head. In a flash, Elijah's stretched out on the bed, and Hayley's jeans are abandoned on the floor. Now just in her underwear, she straddles his body, curves herself over him so that they're kissing, his hands in her hair, along her back, on her waist, pressing her down, down, down.
Klaus is just outside the girls' door, listening to the sounds of their slow, sleepy breathing, when he hears him. Wordlessly, he blurs down to the front gate, where a figure is waiting outside in the shadows. The laugh that greets him is low and humorless. "You know, I always knew you were arrogant. Didn't realize you had a death wish."
Klaus leans casually against the brick of the corridor. "Well, fifteen years with you, anyone would seek an end to that."
"I thought I made it clear to your daughter that you were never to step foot in this city again," Marcel snarls.
"We needed to return to break the spell keeping my siblings alive."
"I don't care. I ran you out—"
"Yes, yes, the King of New Orleans defeated the monsters lurking in the dark, reclaimed his kingdom as his own." Klaus rolls his eyes. "Spare me your posturing. There are no mobs to impress here."
"Oh this isn't posturing." Marcel presses close to the gate. "If you don't leave this city, I will come for each and every one of you."
Klaus appears suddenly, face inches from Marcel's, only bars of wrought iron between them. "And my daughter? Will you come for her?"
"Don't push me, Klaus."
"We're leaving in the morning, Your Majesty," Klaus says, voice dripping with sarcasm. "The witches of this city that you claim to control tried to come for my family today, so my daughter is sleeping off their attack."
Marcel's eyes narrow. "You were attacked by witches?"
"They tried to break into our home as my daughter and sister healed our broken family. Hope single-handedly fended them off. And let me tell you—" Klaus's teeth gleam in the light from a streetlamp. "—if they had succeeded in their efforts, I would have torn this city to shreds."
Marcel covers his mouth with his hand for a moment, and then points at Klaus. "You have until noon to be out of the city limits. If there's still a trace of any of you—any of you—I will personally take you down."
Klaus sketches a mocking bow. "As you command." And then he disappears, leaving Marcel alone in the streetlight.
Hope jerks awake, covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Sometime during the night she kicked all of the covers off of her; the Louisiana swamp air is so much more unbearable than that of northern Florida. Judging by the faintest light visible through the windows, dawn is approaching, and the nightmare that ripped Hope from sleep is not her final wake-up call.
She rolls over with a groan, fully prepared to bury her face into her pillow and fall back asleep, but when her arm hits a wide expanse of cool sheets, she remembers. "River?" She picks her head up. The other side of the bed is empty. "River?" Pushing herself up so that she's propped on one arm, she looks around the room. There's no sign of her girlfriend anywhere. Louder, she calls, "River?" Still no answer.
She's just about to swing her legs onto the floor when something catches her eye, something on River's pillow. She picks up two Polaroid photos. The first makes her blood run cold. She stares down her girlfriend, bound and gagged on a dirty stone floor. The fear in her eyes is visceral, claws at Hope's stomach like a wild animal. Below the image of her kidnapped girlfriend, a message is written in neat script: Come alone.
Shaking, Hope turns her gaze to the second photo. It's of a place—she doesn't recognize it by sight, but by name, a name she has heard in stories from her mother. She swallows thickly, and then, eyes shiny with unshed tears, looks out at the first rays of the day. She knows where she needs to go.
The eighth episode, "So Damn Caught in the Middle," is already available on the Tumblr blog peopleandrhythm at this time.
