"You're only so lonely, and I never had a doubt.
You don't even know me, still you pass your judgement out.
When you belong, you're just a face in the crowd.
You're only lonely so lonely, like everybody else.

You are not a diamond.
You are not a shining star.
It doesn't mean that you're not perfect exactly as you are."

You Are Not: Young Guns

The Abattoir was a stunning building. I didn't ask the history of it, though I imagined Elijah, at least, could give me an extensive, very detailed history of when it was made and everything that had gone on inside prior to the Mikaelsons being forced to flee New Orleans.

I leaned against the railings on the second story, overlooking the large plaza just inside the gates. It was really something, a place that I could understand why they might want to live.

Was their life good here before? Was this where their family throve the most? I knew that this was where Kol had been daggered, twice, but that was in the past, in everyone's minds.

When this was all over, could we have a good life here?

It was a nice thought, one that almost made me smile, but the reality was, this was New Orleans. I had never been anywhere where the supernatural community was so open, but there was so much tension between all of them. The werewolves weren't even allowed inside the French Quarter, and I didn't know what could be done to ease any of the tension between the others.

In a way, it was easy to blame Marcel for this, but witches and vampires never got along. Humans and vampires shouldn't have gotten along the way that they did, so of course the Factions were all fighting. Even if the witches lost access to their ancestral magic, they would still find ways to practice. It would take time to rebuild, but they could connect to normal practices of magic, such as the spirit magic that most witches relied on.

There would never be a time where New Orleans was a safe place, not until my kids were grown and immortal. Even then, I didn't imagine it'd be that safe.

The sound of soft footsteps against the stone floors ripped me from my thoughts, and I found myself actually smiling now. I didn't have to turn around to know who was approaching.

"Out of all of the places in the world you could've chosen, you chose the Abattoir?"

We hadn't been inside of New Orleans long, but since coming here, I hadn't found myself downstairs. I didn't talk to Klaus as often as Elijah, Rebekah, and even Kol did. Sometimes, Kol would go down there just to thank his brother, to admit that forgiving him was easier than he ever would've imagined.

Bygones were bygones, and the Mikaelsons were united. Even if one had to remain daggered in a coffin for them to stay that way, they were unified, as a family should be.

The warm smile, the bright glow in his blue eyes, was still new. After coming back to Mystic Falls once I gave birth to the twins, we had been at war with one another often, over the best future for the twins. At the time, I saw it as Klaus just trying to maintain control, and I wasn't gonna let that happen.

Looking at it now, it was easy to see that, crude as his methods were, all he wanted was to protect the twins. He didn't care who he had to hurt and piss off to do that. At the end of the day, he would see to it that the twins were safe.

That was more of what I needed right now, someone who saw past the human decency that still remained inside of me. I found myself becoming that person, even if I didn't want to be. It was what was being forced on me.

I nodded. "This was your home once. It was the place you were happiest."

"It was."

"I guess I wanted to see what that looked like on you," I admitted. "You'd be pissed if you saw it now. It was taken over by witches."

"Yes. Elijah told me that New Orleans was a war zone. The Abattoir stood as a fortress, the best place to fortify and prepare for war." He leaned against the railing in front of him and breathed in heavily. "I assume that's why you're here talking to me."

"I'm in desperate need of help," I sighed. "I guess a part of me has always been curious about the werewolf side of me. I mean, I was seventeen when I discovered that I had a dormant werewolf gene. I had triggered it before I turned nineteen, but I still have no idea where I come from. Obviously I met Isobel, but she never said anything about who my father was. I'm not a Lockwood. We checked."

His head tilted a bit. "I know that feeling well. I found the man that I believed to be my father impaled by the man I had grown up believing was my father. To this day, I sometimes wonder if Mikael slaughtered all of the werewolves of that village or if some of them survived somehow."

My lips quirked to the side, but my focus shifted back to him. "Will we ever know?"

"I would like to think we would." He looked at me now too, as if he felt my gaze on him. "Is this why you've come to talk to me? To discuss the pains of not knowing who you are?"

"I mean, you're the only one I've got to talk to about it," I said. "Everyone else I know . . . they all know where they came from, and maybe it's the werewolf thing. Maybe it's the part of me that wonders if I belong to a pack, or if I'm just meant to be alone."

"You're not alone," he reminded me. "We can form our own pack, the Original Mikaelson hybrids. One day, Theia and Alastor can join us, and we can allow their hybrids as well, I suppose."

It was a strangely nice thought, even if there were still so many unanswered questions. To have a pack of our own, to help us cope with the uncertainty of that side of us . . . it was a strange sense of family I had never felt with Klaus before.

I laughed. "You know what? Let's do it. We'll fight for Alpha dominance later."

His laughter was more real than I had heard from him in a long time, maybe ever. He had laughed before, with darkness overclouding the bright effect laughter was supposed to bring, but that was oddly absent, in a way I had only ever seen around his family.

He had told me that I was family, and it was becoming very, very real, even in this brief interaction inside his mind.

I hadn't actually known that the Abattoir would look so real inside his mind, as I had never personally been there. I had helped Marcel escape, but everything was through his eyes. It wasn't at the glory it was in now, as if the witches hadn't taken over and ruined it.

The two of us stood against the railings, simply observing the place around us. Klaus had been here, had lived here. He had probably seen the place at its best, in its most historic moments, yet he still stared in awe.

"I know what it feels like," he finally said. The silence wasn't becoming uncomfortable, but it was beginning to draw out longer than I really had time for. "It played a part in creating the darkness inside, the monster I have become. I had no one who understood, no matter how much my siblings claimed to understand. They couldn't."

"I know I could talk to Kol about all of this, but what can I say?" I asked. "He knows who his parents are, who his family is. I . . . I have Elena, and now I have the twins."

"I know it's not by blood, but we are your family now, Darcy. I know those are just words, but I do know what you're going through." He took a deep breath, to focus his thoughts. "Right now, you should focus on protecting the twins. When this is over, we'll help each other."

I nodded. "That's actually why I'm here. The witches have control over the werewolves in New Orleans. A couple decades ago, a curse was put on the Crescent wolf pack, forcing them turn into wolves except for a few hours during the full moon. It's the only time they've been able to be humans. The rest of their time has been spent as wolves. The witches broke that curse, so they're loyal to them."

"You mean to appeal to them," he said, without a hint of a question.

"I had an idea," I said. "We think your mother made your real father a werewolf equivalent of a daylight ring. Paired with Kol's knowledge of Kemiya and my ridiculously overpowered magic, I think I can make these moonlight rings for the werewolves. If I can protect them from turning, maybe I can get them on our side. At this point, being a werewolf would be the last thing they wanted, right?"

"Right," he said, and he rubbed his hand across his chin. "What do you think Kol can help you do?"

"I don't wanna control the werewolves, but I also don't want them to run away with these rings and help the witches," I admitted. "The rings don't just block the curse. It gives them access to their werewolf abilities at any time."

He turned away from me again, but I still saw the gears turning in his mind. If there was one thing I could always say about Klaus, it was that he thought most things through. He was known to be impulsive from time to time, but for major things, such as this, his brilliant mind thought through it all.

The Mikaelsons all did that, and I wondered if it came with time.

He rubbed his lips together. "What exactly are the witches having the werewolves do?"

"Kill any vampire they see," I said. "And that's a problem because Caroline's on her way here now to bring me the vessel that Kol gave me to store magic."

His eyes grew wide, and his head snapped my way. "She's what?"

"If I don't get rid of this magic, we may not have a way out of New Orleans until January," I insisted. "We don't know anything else that can hold magic like that. It's the safest thing we can think to do right now."

His eyes darkened, but even with the stare on me, I didn't really think he was mad at me. "Davina led you right into a trap."

"I'm not sure if she even knew," I said. "She knew that she wanted to save Marcel, and we knew that you would want us to do the same. So we did, and we're gonna figure the rest of this out. The witches aren't gonna let us hole up at the Plantation forever, though."

"No, they will not," he agreed. "You shouldn't spend too much time speaking with me. You should be figuring out their next move."

I shook my head. "They're trying to make an Elder, to complete this Harvest ritual. I already know what they're doing next."

"Rebekah told me the gruesome history of it." A tender smile grew across his lips. "I made the mistake of underestimating you, but I'm mostly proud that you're not backing down. You killed a woman last night, but you didn't let it stop you from doing what needed to be done."

I hadn't really thought much about someone telling him about that, and it wasn't because I thought he would disapprove. I just hadn't really gotten used to hearing it said out-loud.

You killed a woman last night.

"I guess I have your brother to thank for that," I said, and the only way I was able to get anything out was to grab onto the reminders of the night prior. Kol held me and promised me that he would love me, whether I was the same person I was now or whether I became a darkened version of myself, who didn't care about people and took lives. "I don't know how you guys have lived your entire lives alone. I couldn't do it."

"That's where we are different," he said. "I pushed everyone away, forced my family to do the same, and because of it, we became dark creatures. Your insistence to keep people around you will be what keeps you, well, you."

Was that a compliment?

In the only way I think he knew to give compliments, I think it was his way of giving me a compliment. He told me that he was wrong about me, that he had underestimated my ability to survive an eternity, but that sounded almost like he was finally submitting to what I had told him forever ago.

People didn't have to die to survive.

I was learning from his side of it. Sometimes, people did, if for no other reason than to ensure my children didn't. If he was learning a bit from my side, I was interested to see how that played out in the years to come, when he was finally released from death.

There was a smile on my lips before I realized it, but Klaus smiled at me, too. I wasn't entirely sure I was used to this kind of friendship, but I enjoyed it, more than I ever thought I might. "Do you think this is a bad idea?"

"I do not think you will need to do anything with Kemiya," he said. "Werewolves are loyal by nature. Appeal to them. Show them who you are. Don't let them see the mother, but let them see the lonely werewolf, the one trying to find her family. They will understand true loyalties, and they will side with you. The rings would just be a benefit to their loyalty."

I hadn't thought about it that way, but maybe it came from how foreign the werewolf code of loyalty was to me.

"I've heard stuff about the werewolf loyalty, but I've only ever really known Tyler," I informed him. "There wasn't much loyalty there, in the werewolf sense. He hated me when we came back to town, just because we 'sided' with you guys. He didn't care what reasoning there was behind it."

"It's very real, for werewolves who are more in tune with the werewolf side of themselves," he assured me. "Tyler Lockwood discovered his curse shortly before triggering it, and that was all he really knew about any of it. The werewolves of New Orleans are probably quite in tune with that side of themselves, and they would be willing to hear you out, at the very least."

"Thank you."

I didn't think much about what I was doing. Pushing myself off the railing of the Abattoir was easy enough, and I reached over to wrap my arms around Klaus, to use some of my Original tribrid strength to pull him against me.

Though his body was stiff in my arms, I felt his arms moving to wrap around me. "I'm not one for affection, little witch."

"Get over it," I mumbled, and I just squeezed tighter. "I am."

His hesitance disappeared, and in a way, he sank into the embrace. His grip on me wasn't as tight as mine was on him, but he still genuinely held onto me.

I took a slow breath in. "I hate that things have to be this way. Right now, we could really use you."

"I'm happy to lay in a box for a couple decades if it means that you all have a chance to fight for the twins' lives."

A/N: So I thought it'd be neat to have some Darcy/Klaus interactions. I don't know if it's possible for an Original to communicate with a daggered Original, but I figured if Finn became semi-conscious after so long, it could be.

Read, review, and enjoy. :)