Season Two, Episode Seven: Suffocate the Atmosphere

Hayley jerks awake to a loud bang. She blinks rapidly to focus, and it's only when she hears the rumble of the garbage truck down the street that she realizes what ripped her from sleep. She groans and rolls over, and that's when she notices the empty half of the bed beside her, still perfectly made. She furrows her brows and looks around the bedroom. "Elijah?" She's met with silence. There's no sign of him anywhere.

She gets up, pulls a sweatshirt over her head, and pads out into the hall. "Elijah?" No response. Hayley makes her way through the compound, poking her head through doors, looking for him but coming up empty. When she makes it to Rebekah's bedroom, she knocks and waits for the quiet, "Come in."

Hayley pushes open the door. Rebekah is still in bed, her blonde hair strewn wildly across her pillows, and scrolling on her phone. "Hey, have you seen Elijah?"

Rebekah doesn't look over. "Hayley, I have yet to get out of bed this morning, and I have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future. I have no earthly idea where my brother is, but it's not in here."

Hayley makes an unimpressed face. "Did you hear him come in last night?"

"Last I heard he was enforcing Hope's new curfew." She finally tears her eyes away from her phone. "Is he not here?"

"I don't know. Maybe he already left. I'll call him." She leaves the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind her.

Still making her way through the halls, Hayley pulls her phone out of her pocket. She navigates quickly to Elijah's contact and dials. She presses the phone to her ear and waits.

"You have reached the voicemail of: Elijah Mikaelson. At the tone, please leave a mess—"

Hayley hangs up with a frustrated sigh. She stares at her phone screen for a minute, debating how worried she actually wants to feel, before tapping out a text. Hey, call me when you get this. Then she slides her phone back into her pocket and, an uneasy expression on her face, continues on.

Things are swirly when Elijah comes to. This isn't his first time recovering from a stake to the heart, but judging by the fire surging through his veins, he's been injected with more than enough vervaine to kill another sort of vampire. That theory is compounded by the searing around his wrists; though he can't see what's binding them behind his back, he knows vervaine ropes when he feels them melting off his skin.

He blinks once, twice, and, panting, tries to take stock of his surroundings. He recognizes the vague shape and look of a shipping container—the docks, then. He jockeys himself into a somewhat sitting position, using his shoulder to push himself off of the floor, and hears a cold rattling. His ankles are chained together, and the chain disappears into the dark half of the container.

Elijah's head tips back against the wall of the container. He focuses his energy on the vervaine ropes; he's weak, and pulling against the vervaine is excruciating, but if he can just get free—

Sharp footsteps against the metal floors divert Elijah's attention away from his task. He looks over to see a figure emerging from the darkness. He narrows his eyes and whispers, "I…I know you…"

The figure smiles. "We met a few days ago. We have a mutual friend. Hayley?" He brings his face fully into the light from a tiny hole in the wall. "My name's Joel."

The entire Mikaelson clan gathers in the courtyard. Hope and River sit close on the edge of the fountain, River's arm around Hope's shoulders.

"It's been hours," Hayley says, standing apart from the others. "This isn't like him."

Klaus strides in, phone in hand. "He isn't answering any of us."

Hayley turns to Freya. "Nothing on the locator spell?"

Shaking her head, Freya answers, "I could feel that he was still in New Orleans, but nothing more specific than that."

"Same here," Hope pipes up, voice quiet. "I couldn't get a read on him."

From his place leaned up against a wall, Kol drawls, "Well our big brother might be the prissiest of us all, but he doesn't go down without a fight. Now who do we know who could take down an Original?"

There's silence, and then Hope murmurs, "Marcel." All eyes turn to her. "He's, like, a super-charged vampire, or whatever, and his bite is lethal to all vampires, including Originals. He's pissed at me right now. Maybe, to teach me a lesson…"

"No," Klaus insists, shaking his head. "Marcellus would never."

"Marcel hates Elijah," Kol says with an eye roll. "He doesn't need an excuse. One would think tearing his heart out and tossing him off a bridge would be enough to earn some revenge."

"Enough," Rebekah snarls. "This isn't Marcel's doing."

Hayley's already heading for the exit. "It's worth an ask, don't you think?"

"Wait." Hayley stops, and everyone turns to look at Freya. She's seated, arms crossed in on herself. "I think…I think may know what happened to him." She takes a deep breath. "There's a vampire hunter in town."

Elijah shakes his head, partially to clear it, partially in disbelief. "You…you're…"

Joel leans against the container wall opposite Elijah. "Yeah. Looks like you and I both found ourselves smitten with Hayley. Oh, that isn't what this is about, by the way. I'm not, like, jealous or anything. God, we slept together, what, eight years ago? Please, I'm just relieved that that kid she was talking about is too old to mine." He snorts. "Nearly had a heart attack in the middle of the farmer's market."

"Then what is this about?" Elijah grits through his teeth.

"Oh right." Joel rocks himself off of the wall and walks closer. "So, I'm a vampire hunter. I know, I'm a little short to play the part, but I've been staking vamps like you since I was eighteen years old."

"I highly doubt you've ever staked a vampire like me."

"Right, right. You're an Original. Hadn't even heard of you until a couple of days ago. See, when my sister got accepted to grad school here in New Orleans, I thought, This is the perfect opportunity to do some real good. Everyone knows that New Orleans is crawling with all sorts of supernatural witchery, and I assumed I'd spend my night staking as many vamps as I can.

"That's when I found out about you." Joel squats in front of Elijah. "Kill an Original, wipe out their entire line. That's a lot of vampires in one fell swoop."

"Genius plan," Elijah says dryly. "There's just one problem."

"And what's that?"

Elijah stares him right in the eye. "You can't kill me."

Joel pushes himself back up with a groan. "Right, right. Original vampires can't be killed in the usual ways—stake to the heart, beheading, fire, tearing out the heart. That is inconvenient, not going to lie. The only thing that can kill you is white oak."

"And there's no white oak left. You're only…oh, fifteen years too late."

"Right, right." Joel digs around in the pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a tiny vial filled with what appears to be dirt. He carefully extracts the stopper and dumps the vial onto Elijah's lap. "Maybe not so much."

Elijah eyes the substance warily. "What is that?"

"I thought you'd recognize it. Heard your aunt Dahlia tried to poison you with it once back in the day."

Elijah goes very, very still. "Where did you get that?"

Joel shrugs. "Doesn't matter. What matters…" He grins. "…is that I'm going to kill you with it."

The breath whooshes out of Hope. "I'm sorry, what?"

Rebekah looks aghast. "Freya, how long have you known about this?"

"Just—just a couple of days—"

"A couple of days?" Hope leaps to her feet. "Three vampires were staked yesterday and you never thought to bring up that you knew there was a vampire hunter in the Quarter?"

"What the hell, Freya?" Hayley snaps.

Freya takes a deep breath. "There was someone I was…protecting—"

"And what of my daughter?" Klaus's eyes are boring so hard into Freya it's a wonder her skull doesn't burst into flames. "When did you decide to stop protecting her?"

Kol snorts. "That's rich, coming from the lunatic starting wars in the city just to undermine his daughter's power."

Hayley's head snaps back and forth between them. "Wait, what?"

Hope lets out a strangled groan. "Oh my god." Freya finally looks up to see Hope staring at her. "It's her, isn't it?" Freya nods.

Klaus looks bewildered. "Her? Her who?"

"Her name is Amaya." Freya's voice is barely above a whisper. "She works at Rousseau's. We've been…seeing each other for a few weeks now."

Silence reigns. The other Mikaelson siblings exchange glances of varying degrees of surprised, before Rebekah says, "You've been dating a woman?"

"Well why the bloody hell should we care about that?" Kol bursts out. "My god, Nik fell for a seventeen-year-old beauty pageant winner back in Mystic Falls and no one batted an eye. Surely we can't be fazed by this."

Unimpressed, Klaus ignores his brother and says, "I fail to see the connection between this girl and—"

"He's her brother." Klaus falls silent. "The vampire hunter is Amaya's brother. And she doesn't know—not about him, not about me, not about any of this. And I knew if word got out that it was a vampire hunter was killing people in New Orleans, it wouldn't be long before someone killed him, and then her brother would be dead—"

"And what of our brother, sister?" Rebekah asks. "What of Elijah? Should he die to spare her feelings?"

"No, of course not—"

"The threat comes from outside the city." Everyone turns to look at Hope, confused by her sudden interjection. She's staring at the ground, thinking hard. "That's what…that's what Esther said to me. 'The threat comes from outside the city, but it will consume our communities, setting them aflame from the inside.'" Hope looks back up at Freya. "It's him. This burgeoning war between the witches and the vampires, the chaos and the confusion and the fear. You knew what was causing it all and you didn't say anything. And now my uncle's life in at risk."

Freya's eyes slide close. "I am so sorry—"

"Save it, Freya," Hayley snarls.

"I'm going to go commune with the ancestors," Hope says. "See if they can't get a read on where Elijah is." She heads for the stairs, River close on her heels.

Rebekah walks over to Hayley and wraps an arm around her shoulder. "Come. We can be of use to Hope." She leads her after the girls.

Klaus stalks up to Freya. "Tell me everything you know about this hunter. Now."

"I don't know much," Freya insists. "Amaya never spoke much of Joel—"

"Joel?" Hayley comes to a halt and whips around. "The hunter's name is Joel?"

"Yes."

The final piece falls into place. "I know exactly who he is."

Joel has his back turned to Elijah, fiddling with something in the darkness. Elijah pulls slightly on the vervaine ropes, but the sizzle of his skin burning off earns a quiet tut from the hunter. "If I have to, I'll stake you again. But that would just be a waste of both of our time."

"I'm sure you have some tragic backstory that I would love hear another day," Elijah says tiredly, "but today I'm just not in the mood. If you let me go, I'll do my best to ensure that you actually have another day."

Joel turns around, some sort of device in his hand. "No one's going to find you here. I got a witch to do a little cloaking spell for me."

Elijah's face betrays surprise. "A witch from New Orleans is helping you?"

"Oh no, no one from this city. Well, actually now that you mention it, it was a New Orleans witch who told me all about you and your family. She's the one who gave me the idea to wipe you all out so I could rid this city of vampires once and for all."

Impressed, Elijah says, "Quite the operation you've got planned. Pity it'll never work."

Joel makes a face. "What does that mean?"

"The vast majority of the vampires in this city belong to my brother's sire line."

"So?"

Elijah smiles. "My brother's link to his sire line was severed fifteen years ago. Killing him will do nothing but rob a young girl of her father."

Joel stares at Elijah for a long time, face impassive. Then he blinks. "Well then, screw New Orleans. You have to have sired vampires wreaking havoc somewhere in the world. I'm thinking more globally than just one shitty city in Louisiana."

Elijah lets out a dry, breathy laugh. "You should be grateful that it was I who heard that and not my brother."

"Well you're not going to get to tell him, because this is the part where I kill you." Joel presses a button on the device in his hands, and something starts whirring in the dark half of the shipping container. Elijah can hear the air shift, and there's something heavy about it. Suddenly, he feels it, clinging to his nostrils, to the back of his throat—white oak ash.

He starts to choke, coughing and sputtering uncontrollably. His body screams to get it out, get it out, but the ash is being blown his way, surrounding him in a slowly thickening cloud of poison. Joel leans back against the metal wall of the container, crosses his arms, and watches.

After pulling on her second boot, Hayley pushes herself off of the bed and stalks toward the door to her bedroom. She pulls up short, though, when someone appears in the hall. "Out of the way."

Freya puts out a hand. "I just wanted to apologize—"

"I don't want to hear your apology," Hayley snaps. "Not after what you did to Elijah, to me, to Hope."

"I was trying to protect someone I care about—"

"And in the process you let a murderer run free in New Orleans, in the city where my daughter lives." Hayley shakes her head. "I don't care if you love this girl or not. You had the choice to stop this guy and you didn't. That's the only thing I care about."

Before Freya can say anything else, Hope appears beside her. Without looking at her aunt, she says, "Uncle Elijah's somewhere by the docks. The ancestors can't get more specific. He's being cloaked."

Hayley nods. "Okay, stay here. Your father and I are going to go get him."

She starts to push past Freya, who begins, "I can help—"

"I'm going too." Hope juts her chin out defiantly. "You're going to need a witch. I can help."

"No," Hayley says emphatically. "It's too dangerous."

"What're you going to do, search every building, every shipping container, every warehouse on the docks? He could be dead by then."

"We don't know that this hunter has the means to kill an Original," Freya points out.

Hope finally looks at her aunt, and her glare is piercing. "No. We don't. There are a lot of things we still don't know, things that we might have known if you had chosen to tell us anything. But my uncle's life is on the line, and I'm not taking any chances. So I'm going to go down to the docks, I'm going to find him, and I'm going to bring him home." She marches down the hall toward the stairs. "And none of you is going to stop me."

The sun glints brightly off of the Mississippi, and Hope holds an open hand over her eyes to shield them from the glare. "There are thousands of places he could be."

Klaus places a hand on her shoulder. "Anything you could do to get more specific would be a great help, luv."

Hope nods, and then bows her head as if in prayer. Her parents watch her warily, unsure of what to do. There's a sound, gradual, as if a breeze coming in from the sea, that only Hope can hear: whispers. She starts to walk, eyes still closed.

Hayley and Klaus exchange a wild look. "Hope?" her mother calls.

"They're helping me find him," is the only response. She keeps walking, and her parents, with no other choice, follow.

Elijah is coughing heavily, curled over on himself grotesquely as he tries to expel the white oak ash from his body. His throat is closing, growing tighter and tighter, and as he struggles to breathe, he can see his skin start to gray.

Joel coughs too, and lets out a low whistle. "Damn, if I stay in here, this ash just might kill me too. I'll head out, come back when you're dead." He strides for the container entrance without a backward glance at the dying man. The clang of the metal door is deafening as Elijah is left to choke alone.

Hayley and Klaus follow Hope through a maze of shipping containers and warehouses, not sure at all where they're going. They double back when they hit dead ends, or even just when Hope spins around without warning. Each of them want to say something, to ask what she's hearing, but they let her be, choosing instead to walk behind in uneasy silence.

Finally, Hope stops dead, smack in the middle of a large path between two long rows of containers. Her eyes are still twisted shut, as if she's listening intently to something. After half a minute, Klaus decides to ask, "Hope? What is it?"

Without a word, Hope's eyes spring open, and slowly, she lifts up her head.

A few hundred yards down the path stands a man, staring at them with wide eyes. Joel. A growl rips from Hayley's throat. She takes a step, but Klaus grabs her arm. When she turns, wild-eyed, to glare at him, he says, "You deal with him. Hope and I will find Elijah."

Having gotten all the confirmation she needs, Hayley tears off in a blur after Joel, who disappears like a rabbit between two containers in terror.

Hope's walking faster now, her father hot on her heels. "He's dying," she says, panicked. "I can feel him dying, but I can't see him—"

"Hope." Klaus steps in front of her, places his hands on her shoulders to stop her.

"What're you—"

"Breathe. You are the most powerful witch this city has ever seen. If anyone can find your uncle Elijah, it is you. Believe in yourself. I do."

Hope nods, and lets her eyes slide shut. She listens as the voices of the ancestors wash over her, a cacophony of chatter and information. She focuses on sifting through the noise, searching for the one thing that can help her find her uncle. Then, out of the blue, a thought: Blue container, fifty yards due east.

Her eyes open again. "I know where he is."

Joel steps as silently as he can manage, picking his way through the shipping yard like a big cat in its jungle. He knows what Hayley is now, knows how easily it would be for her to track his every move. He keeps to the mosaicked shadows on the ground, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

Still, he can't help but taunt her. In a low voice, he says, "Gotta admit, you snuck it past me all those years ago. I had no idea you were a bloodsucker. Didn't even know there was such a thing as a werewolf, either." There's a loud bang off to his right, and he flinches violently, but there's nothing there. Pressing on, he says, "I didn't mean to shoot your kid, you know. I don't hunt humans. It was a mistake. I'm glad she's okay. So I get why you're pissed, but—"

And then he's flying through the air, tumbling limb over limb until he crashes onto the pavement and skids. He pushes himself up with a groan, but before he's back on his feet, a punch like a wrecking ball crashes across his face. He falls again, and this time, before he tries to stand, he whips a small gun out of his pocket. He rolls onto his back and fires, but Hayley dodges the vervaine dart easily.

She stands tall over him, eyes black as night, fangs bared. "You nearly murdered my daughter, and now you've taken one of the people I love the most. You think I'm pissed?"

Joel swipes a leg out and trips Hayley up. She easily rolls and hops back onto her feet, but when she looks down, he's gone, up and running between containers again. She rolls her eyes, and a blink later, she's in front of him, clutching him by the neck. He grabs at her arm, gasping desperately for breath, but her grip is far too strong to break.

She pulls him close and hisses in his face, "I'll tell your sister you died doing something brave. The lie should bring her some comfort." Then she sinks her fangs into the scar along his neck, tearing out his throat. Blood spurts all over her, and she drops his corpse to the ground with a satisfying thud.

Hope comes to a stop in front of a blue container. "This is it?" Klaus asks. Instead of answering, Hope holds out a hand. The door to the container bursts open, and a gust of air and ash follows it out. Klaus immediately begins coughing, but blurs into the poisoned air anyway. He looks down and sees his brother, his skin nearly completely grayed. Klaus easily snaps the chains around his ankles, then scoops one arm under Elijah's back and another under his legs and whisks him out of the container and into the clear air.

Klaus lays his brother on the ground, ripping the vervaine ropes from his wrists. "He's not breathing."

Hope falls to her knees beside her uncle just as Hayley appears, still splattered with Joel's blood. She looks down at Elijah, distraught. "Is he…"

"Hold on." Hope settles her hands about a foot over Elijah's chest and closes her eyes. After a few seconds, ash starts to rise out of Elijah's mouth. Suddenly, he's coughing, hacking up the ash as Hope pulls it from his lungs.

As the gray starts to fade from his skin, Hayley crashes to the ground beside him, pulling his head into her lap. "You're okay," she says softly, brushing the ash away from him. "You're okay."

Once she's finished pulling as much ash as she can, Hope stands up. Klaus immediately grabs her and pulls her into a hug. "Thank you," he breathes into her hair.

Hope wraps her arms around her father's middle and, face buried in his chest, hugs him back.

Season two, episode eight, "Look What You've Done," is already available on the Tumblr blog peopleandrhythm at this time.