A/N not sure how i feel about this chapter. I got stuck writing it, hence the delay and skipped over to write some of the later stuff. Writing action is hard. Its difficult to stop it becoming a list of events so I scrapped it and made the whole thing more vague. Hope it doesn't make it impossible to follow.
Anyway let me know what worked and what didn't if you feel so inclined.
RECAP if you need it i realise its been a while. You know i really thought more had happened than this
Chap 1 - Caroline goes to NOLA to comfort Klaus' after hearing loss. He doesn't come clean about hope mainly due to some heavy lurking by the ever gorgeous Elijah
Chap 2 - Caroline and Klaus get a little cosy (and a little smoochy when she finds him upset and painting) but Elijah is mistrustful. Caroline decided to investigate what they are hiding.
Chap 3 - Caroline meets up with Cami and hearing her story makes her think about trying to understand klaus more. Elijah gets wind of her investigations and bullies her into leaving while Klaus is out of the way.
Chap 4 - A full moon. Caroline leaves Klaus a note and leaves as Elijah instructed but Caroline and Cami realise that Elijah is trying to keep them both out of the way. Caroline returns to the compound to find klaus weakened by the moonlight rings. While Elijah and Haley hunt down the rings Caroline and Klaus fight side by side and get a little smoochy (again) in the bloody aftermath. Caroline is remind by the arrival of Cami that that is not a good thing and scarpers back to whitmore.
Chap 5 - Klaus finds Caroline's note and calls her arousing her friends' suspicion. She calls him back but tells him she can't be the monster being with him would make her. Later he calls to say he's going to face his farther.
Chap 6 - Desperate to keep hope hidden form their mother Klaus convinces Elijah to call Caroline and ask her to help them. She agrees despite being angry with klaus and not knowing anything about hope
Chap 7 - Caroline heads off to help Klaus only to be presented with Hope (she's a little surprised). Not knowing how else to protect her she returns to Mystic Falls and her friends
On with the tale.
Caroline's POV as usual
Chapter 8
In the end it's the most human thing that get's them found. For all his power and his determination, all his secrecy and his perfect planning it is Klaus' humanity that is the architect of their discovery.
She blames herself. She had sown the seed the first night she'd had Hope. What a lovely thing she'd thought, to let him hear his daughters breathing as she slept. He'd called each night in the week that followed, the week he has spent battling his brother.
She remembers the clumsy embarrassed way he'd asked the first time. He'd called to tell her that they had defeated his mother and while Esther languished in transition, and reaped what she sowed a millennia before, Finn still threatened them. "It won't be long," he'd said, so confidently she'd believed it without question. "Without my mother at his side Finn won't be too much trouble. Don't worry love you won't be playing baby sitter much longer."
She'd told him about Bonnie and the cloaking spell the witch cast to hide his daughter. Had not told him about the long hard conversations she'd had to have to get everyone on board, the number of times she'd had to remind them that Hope is an innocent.
"She did it then?" he'd said with the light tone of the happily victorious. "Perhaps she's warming up to me"
She'd scoffed and he'd laughed and then he'd fallen silent and she'd sensed he'd wanted to ask for something but hadn't known how. "Could I…" he'd fumbled. "Is she sleeping? Maybe, could…"
"You wanna say goodnight?" she'd felt her heart melting like ice cream, sweet and sticky, all over her good sense. He'd answered with a simple hushed "yes" and listened in silence to the baby's quiet rhythmic breath until she'd needed the bathroom so badly she'd had to end the call.
That was seven days ago and every night since then he's called on some pretext, a status report, or to rant about one or other of his brothers, or just to talk to her for a little while. But she's known why he really calls and so at the end of each call, without being asked, she lays her phone alongside Hope's cot and lets him be close to her for a few minutes.
She's out in town picking up groceries when her phone rings, 'number unknown' in the middle of the day setting alarm bell ringing deafeningly in her head.
"Caroline" it's Klaus' voice charged with urgency. "Finn's coming, he knows where you are. Haley and I are on are way but he has a head start, you need to get her out of there"
"Oh shit. What happened?" she's running out of the store and back to her car desperate to get back to the boarding house where Elena and Damon are watching Hope.
"He stole my bloody phone" Klaus growls and she can tell he's furious with himself that he slipped up. That Finn didn't even need his reclaimed magic to break his secret. It's so pedestrian.
"I'll get her out of here don't worry. Just hurry up ok"
…..
She bursts into the boarding house to find Damon lying on the floor, Hope propped up on a bank of cushions next to him. He's shaking a brightly coloured jangling toy in front of her face while she gurgles happily. Damon Salvatore, she has been shocked, and yet not, he is so adaptable after all, by how it has been him who's taken most easily to their shared, and bless them all it has been shared, responsibility for Hope.
"Just in time, she smells" he comments, not noticing her agitation. Sure Damon's been a dream with feeds and stories, and he's like a magician at bedtime, but he draws the line at dirty diapers.
"Finn's coming"
"What?" Elena asks as she vamps in form the kitchen and scoops up Hope. "What do we do? Do we run?"
"How long do we have?" Damon asks.
" I don't know. Not long. We have to move fast"
"Too late," Stefan bursts in, unusually animated for him. "There are wolves in the forest"
"Shit" she swears. If they run now the wolves will give chase. Finn is presumably nearby, it's only a matter of time before they are found.
"Get Bonnie. We'll have to make a stand here." Stefan decided and his brother nods.
"I've faced these wolves," she warns, remembering the brief battle in New Orleans. "With these rings they're as strong as we are."
"Well good job we're prepared then." Damon says opening a large chest. Inside is an arsenal, Alaric's she guesses, all sorts of crossbows and guns and what she sincerely hopes is a good stash of wolfs-bane grenades. Damon gives one a shake and grins. "This'll slow them down no matter how tough those rings make them."
Fifteen minutes later and they're ready, or at least as ready as they can possibly be. Windows barricaded, weapons at the ready.
Bonnie has just finished chanting, a protection spell merged with a confusion spell, hopefully it will disorientate the wolves enough to give the vampires a fighting chance.
"This is crazy," Bonnie sighs. "I can't believe we're doing this for Klaus"
"Klaus is a colossal dick," Damon agrees. "And for those of you who haven't experienced the raging good time that is near death by werewolf bite, can I just say I'm with the witch on this"
"We're not doing this for Klaus, we're doing it for Hope." Elena corrects them. She has doted on the child since she arrived and it breaks her heart to see her friend's oh so obvious longing. Poor Elena, she'd always wanted a family, motherhood had been part of all her future plans. Immortality and Damon don't seem a very good swap for that lost dream. "It's not her fault her dad's a…"
"Jackass?" She offers. "But he is on his way so don't worry about wolf bites, he'll cure you. Just like he cured you before," she challenges Damon to deny it. "Twice"
She knows Damon doesn't really have any intention of handing over Hope, but he's Damon and he's just got to question their do-gooder ways. No one takes him seriously and she senses he's fine with that. He can role his eyes and play the cynic, and the bad boy, to his hearts content, confident that the worst of himself will always be suppressed by the good in him that Elena's endless love quietly demands.
"Fine" the elder Salvatore gives one of his extravagant gestures of capitulation complete with eye roll.
She turns her questioning eyes to Bonnie, she has to know they're all in this one hundred percent. "Are we good?"
"Of course" Bonnie sets her jaw and her power and goodness shine through her eyes. She ashamed to have doubted either. "Lets do this"
The wolves come in human form. They circle the house, sniffing them out, looking for an easy way in and waiting. It seems like hours, it's probably no more than fifteen minutes.
"Vampires of Mystic Falls" finally Finn has arrived and is making a typically dramatic Mikaelson entrance. "I have no quarrel with any one of you."
"Ask yourselves why you would die for my brother." He continues, his voice raised but no where near a shout. "Who is surely as vile a creature as is even imaginable."
She runs her tongue over her burgeoning fangs, doesn't even let her mind process the hypocrisy of calling anyone vile when you're trying to kill a baby. It won't help to be angry, no matter how righteous it may be.
The body Finn has taken over is handsome and lean and his voice is rich and interesting. She imagines the rightful owner is charismatic. Finn is not. He is as vile, and as pompous and boring, as any other zealot. "Give me the child," he continues. "And I will graciously allow your parasitic existences to continue. Deny me and I promise you I will destroy every one of you who dares stand against me"
"Oh will you shut up" Damon calls out in irritation. They're supposed to be stalling, buying time until the cavalry, in the form of two furious hybrids, arrives. But Damon being Damon has to provoke the witch. "You know, much as I hate your dick of a brother I'm beginning to see why Klaus kept you in a box"
"My brother will pay for his many crimes soon enough" Finn assures them. "But you won't be alive to witness it."
His voice is quieter as he turns to his wolves outside but the vampires still hear it clearly. "Well?"
"Four vamps," a country accent informs him. "Shouldn't be a problem but they got a witch too"
"I will deal with the witch." Finn orders. "Kill the vampires and bring me the child alive"
The wolves hurl themselves at the large bay window, shaking Bonnie's spell but leaving the glass in tact. The confusion spell is working too, they would be so screwed without Bonnie, and the wolves lose direction and purpose when they near the house.
Finn looks angry and, raising his hands a little from his sides, begins to chant. Bonnie's eyes widen and she responds with chanting of her own but it cuts off and her nose bleeds a little. "He's trying to make a hole in the barrier spell," the witch gasps out. "He's strong"
"So are you Bon-bon" Damon tells her. "Dig deep now"
Bonnie nods and begins chanting again but Finn is powerful and Bonnie shakes with the effort of keeping him out.
A barrier shimmers visibly around the window and a handful of werewolves burst through before Bonnie can slam the magical door shut. Glass shatters in their wake and they growl and charge the vampires. Stefan vamps forward and they all follow suit. The wolves have strength but the vamps have the speed and with only four in the room they can flash around the group and snap their necks.
Bonnie gasps. "I can't keep him out"
"Then take him out" Stefan places a hand on the witch's shoulder in support. "We'll handle the wolves"
Bonnie stops focusing on the barrier and turns her attention to a one-on-one witchy smack down with Finn. The wolves come then, bursting through the crumbling barrier and straight into a barrage of fire from Alaric's best weaponry.
The yelp and whine like dogs as the wolf's bane hits them and their attack is broken up enough to employ some vamp speed in taking a handful out, but their numbers are far superior, they seem to come and come.
For all their weapons and for all that they are still harder to kill than the wolves this is a losing fight and a painful one. Some come in wolf form dripping poison from their jaws others wield stakes and they are losing. Worse still, Bonnie is losing.
As she snaps the neck of a wolf and hurls the limp body at another of its pack she sees Bonnie stumble backwards as Finn's incantations pound her body. Elena sees it too and vamps over to their old friend. "Grab Hope" she hears Elena tell the witch before she makes a brave, fruitless, attempt to tackle Finn head on.
Bonne does as she's told ignoring Elena's pitiful scream of pain as Finn fries her brain with his magic. The baby cries for the first time as Bonnie reaches into her cubby hole and their enemies turn as one to the sound.
"Grab it" Finn yells as Bonnie gathers Hope protectively in her arms.
They're going to fail. A wolf sinks human-ish teeth into her shoulder and she barely feels it. Hope is going to die. Finn and his wolves are too strong and Klaus is too late.
She's just a baby her mind cries desperately as she sinks down, defeated, under the wolf's attack.
After a second of wallowing in their defeat she realises that everything is still. She looks up and the tableau is not what she expects.
Their vamp's are all down. Elena's neck broken effortlessly by a snap of Finn's fingers and Stefan broken and bleeding on his side against wall. Only Damon isn't quite beaten, he's a worthless shit in so many ways but he doesn't go down without a fight. He's cut and poisoned and half dead but he's still struggling futilely against a pair of burly wolves who have him pinned down.
But the kill isn't coming. Everything is still, the eyes oft the pack are on their leader and the witch facing him. Bonnie is chanting again, Hope in her arms, innocent eyes open, dark and calm.
Suddenly she realises that Hope is more than the sweet infant who likes bathtime and Damon's singing voice, who won't stay still for a diaper change or go to sleep without her special blanket. She is Esther's granddaughter, Klaus' child; she is the miracle baby. She realises suddenly why they all wanted her so much; she has so much power.
Bonnie channels that power and with it she is more than a match for Finn. He fights back with all the strength of the desperate but Hope snuggles closer to Bonnie and with a flick of the witches hand it is over and Finn lies dead.
For long minutes the wolves seem dumbfounded. Their leader is gone and she prays they'll turn tail and flee. But taking out Finn has sent Bonnie, finally exhausted, to her knees and the rest of them are easy pickings. There is nothing here to flee from.
A wolf in a plaid shirt steps forward, assuming responsibility in the wake of Finn's death, and makes a play to be their Alpha. "Take the child," he barks. "It'll be leverage"
"Oh I wouldn't advise that." That voice, she exhales with relief at the welcome sound of it. The tone, light and conversational, making the murder below its tranquil surface all the more chilling.
"The hybrid" one of the wolves observes unnecessarily and she lets that be confirmation enough that he is not an hallucination. She relaxes and drags herself back towards the others to watch the inevitable.
"Hybrids, actually" Haley steps up beside Klaus looking far less controlled than the Original. "Now get the hell away form my daughter"
Plaid shirt raises his hands in surrender and Klaus smirks. "They're your people Haley" Klaus tilts his head towards the furious brunette at his side. "What do you say?"
Haley doesn't hesitate or take her eyes off the wolves as her twin fangs drop. "Kill them all"
Klaus smiles around his own matching fangs and if the wolves think that odds of fifteen to one will be enough they are about to realize how wrong they are.
Haley makes a full frontal assault on the pack and meanwhile Klaus takes two bounding steps, kicks off the wall and hurtles towards the wolf nearest them where they've dragged themselves to huddle around Hope against the back wall. As he leaps she fancies she sees the bones of his forearms stretch into claws to messily gouge the heart from his enemies chest.
She glances back at Haley and sees her jaws extend, muzzle like, as she rips out plaid shirt's throat. Klaus bounds towards his next victim, his hands slamming down on the floor before he leaps, the curve of his back not altogether human.
They are terrible, bestial, and beautiful. She's seen him kill before but this is different, animal. Perhaps he draws on the wolf at will or perhaps, here facing his own kind with his own blood threatened, it is that his true nature cannot be contained.
Haley shows more beast than he does, she is grotesquely beautiful, grey fur over her clawed hands, elongated jaws dripping blood. The hybrids. They are abominations even among the monsters of their supernatural world, and yet they are also parents and their rage, their vengeance, is just and human.
A wolf tries to run and Klaus lands on her back and savages her throat growling loudly as he throws back his head and sends a spray of blood arcing through the air to splatter the wall.
None of them can do anything but watch and cling to each other, Bonnie at their centre with Hope cradled, quiet and unafraid, in her arms as her parents tear bloody revenge into those that would have hurt her.
Finally the last wolf dies at Haley's feet choking on the blood pouring from his own ruined throat. The hybrids stand side by side, painted in the red of their righteous victory.
They turn as one and Haley moves slowly towards them, Klaus a fraction off her shoulder, both pairs of eyes human again and riveted to the child in Bonnie's arms. Their bleeding group parts to make way and Haley raises her arms tentatively to take her baby.
Haley clings to Hope for a moment taking long shuddering breaths before turning to Klaus, they cradle the child between them and when she gurgles and bats at her father's bloodied face the two hybrids eyes meet over her head in shared joy and they laugh. They are so like any other new parents, that you could, if not for their bloodied state, forget that they are monsters.
Haley transfers Hope awkwardly to Klaus' arms and he takes her and lays his lips on her forehead. He closes his eyes and holds his daughter for the first time in months and he is still, utterly still. All his power and his rage and paranoia are gone and he simply is.
His redemption is tantalizingly possible in this second, and she is terrified of how she yearns to help him find it. She looks away because the moment is private and sweet and he is so beautiful that she can feel herself slipping away into the dream of what he could be were he not so tied to being himself.
"Is there somewhere we can get her cleaned up?" Haley asks and Elena, awake and rubbing her neck in Damon's arms, is the first to break their silence and point them to Hope's room.
Klaus picks up a pair of crystal glasses from the mantle that somehow survived the battle and bites his own wrist to fill each one with his healing blood. He moves to follow Haley but stops on the stairs and turns to the disheveled group.
"Thank you," he says and she thinks that will be all but he takes in a deep breath and continues. "You protected my daughter. This is a debt that cannot ever be fully repaid. But know this, whatever enemies you face, whatever threatens you, my family and I will stand by you. Each of you, always and forever"
Then he is gone and they are all still for a moment before Damon breaks ranks and limps gingerly over to grasp the glasses that will heal the agonising bites.
"Original protection for the rest of forever" Damon gives a contemplative nod and slugs back half a glass of Klaus' blood. "Not bad for a bit of babysitting"
"Last time I babysat I got ten bucks" Elena comments dryly, her voice hoarse from her ordeal.
They all chuckle, releasing the tension and the fear in a ripple of nervous laughter.
"Drink up," Damon orders and hands her and Elena a glass each. They both take what they need to heal. His blood tastes familiar on her tongue and she savours the metallic flavour, richer than human blood but more bitter.
"Yuch" Elena grimaces and hands the glass to Stefan. Meanwhile she holds the liquid in her own mouth a little longer to taste the burn of ancient power and untamed beast, the taste of him.
She takes another lingering sip and shrugs to herself, maybe it's an acquired taste.
