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Don't Look Back

"Well, this at least has to make you feel better about Natalie," Kol was commenting that morning. Scarlett had called to give Rebekah and Kol an update on what they were up against and how they were dealing with it; Rebekah had already asked if they should come home, to which Scarlett told her no.

"What are you talking about?" Scarlett asked, sipping from her blood bag.

"Well, all that time you thought you were the reason Nicolette killed her," Kol reminded her. "Turns out, she was just power crazed. OW," he complained as Rebekah swatted his arm.

"Yeah, I'm thrilled," Scarlett commented sarcastically with an eye roll, Rebekah snatching the phone from her brother.

"Do you need us back?" she asked again.

"No," Scarlett reiterated firmly. "I just didn't want you both to be out of the loop." She paused. "It's honestly probably safer if you stay where you are."

"And what about you?" Rebekah asked.

"We've got to get your brother cleansed from this thing," Scarlett reminded her. "I want to take the girls away, but unfortunately I don't think this is something we can out run."

"Has Rory had anymore dreams?" Kol was asking now.

"Well, I've turned off 'LaFleur radio' in her head," Scarlett sighed heavily. "But, doesn't mean this thing won't get into either of their heads." She rubbed her forehead now, headache forming. "Just...really, we'll be ok. I'll call when we have more, all right?" With that, she hung up the phone. Hearing voices on the balcony, she turned down the hall to see who it was. She smiled when she spotted Elijah and Aurora, Elijah kneeling and pointing out different sights in the quarter.

"Mommy!" Aurora said when she spotted her, running down the hall to her.

"Hi baby," Scarlett smiled, kneeling down to her, Elijah coming closer to them.

"Are you gonna come with us?!" she was asking excitedly. "Daddy said we can go see Miss Mary at her house! And we're gonna stay up late and look at stars and-"

"Aw, Rory, I wish I could," Scarlett told her, reaching out and tucking her hair behind her ear. "But, your Uncle Klaus is sick, so mommy's gonna stay and help Aunt Freya make him better."

"Please," Aurora pouted and Scarlett looked to Elijah for back up.

"I wish you would," Elijah told her now and she made a face as she stood up.

"Thank you," she mouthed out sarcastically, her eyes serious; she looked back down at their daughter, her smile soft. "I've gotta do some work with your aunt honey, ok? But you, daddy, and Hope are going to have so much fun with Miss Mary all right?" Aurora nodded, though she still wore a slight pout. "Go finish getting ready," she nodded towards Aurora and Hope's room and Aurora took off.

"Please don't make me the bad guy," Scarlett pleaded with Elijah once Aurora was out of ear shot.

"This thing wants your family's magic," Elijah reminded her as though it should be obvious. "The last person that should be trying to fight it right now is you."

"Your brother is sick," Scarlett told him now. "If we don't hit this with all we have, who knows how badly..." She made herself stop, shaking her head and the thoughts out along with it. She stepped closer to him, taking his hand. "Please just take the girls out to Mary's, until Klaus is clear from this thing."

"If he's not clear by the time I come back, I'm taking you out of this city," Elijah compromised with her. He wanted his brother cured, of course, but whatever was after them was after them specifically because of the magic that Scarlett's family possessed.

"What do you think they're talking about?" Aurora asked, straining to hear. She and Hope were sitting inside at Mary's at the table where they were left to eat their lunch while Elijah was outside with Mary and someone they had never met before. When they got to Mary's home in the bayou after picking flowers for her, even Elijah seemed surprised to see him there since he had disappeared shortly after Hayley's death. He had introduced himself to Hope first as one of her mom's old friends, before introducing himself to Aurora; it was Jackson.

"I don't know," Hope shrugged, picking at her food before glancing out the window as well. "How do you think that guy knows my mom?"

"I think he's another wolf," Aurora suggested, paying attention to her father's facial features. He wore a lot of concern, his brow furrowed as he listened to Jackson.

"You're sure?" Elijah was asking Jackson outside, keeping his voice low as he had over heard the girls trying to hear.

"Unfortunately," Jackson nodded, handing Elijah his grandfather's old journal. When he took off from New Orleans he took a box of family stuff along with him, finding this journal at the bottom. It detailed how he was a follower of the hollow, how it was she who got him to kill Hayley's parents. "This thing has been in the city before, it resurfaces every so often trying to gain more traction, power." He nodded at the journal. "It also seems pretty hell bent on going after the Labonair family."

"So, it isn't just after us because of Aurora and Scarlett's magic," Elijah sighed.

"It wants Hope too," Jackson confirmed his thought. He looked inside at the little girls and caught Hope's eye, giving her a soft smile. "What are you going to do?" he asked as he turned back to Elijah. Before Elijah could answer, his phone started ringing with a call from Scarlett.

"Are you all right?" he asked her immediately.

"I need you to come back," she was saying quickly.

"What happened?" he asked.

"Your sister," she said and he could practically hear her eye roll. While Freya was family, her most strained relationship was with Scarlett. She often treated the LaFleur like she was an outsider since she was not technically a blood Mikaelson. Scarlett often countered that she was the one that had spent much more time with them than she had. They always set their differences aside, but it lead to a long standing tension.

"Scarlett," Elijah said seriously.

"I thought that she and Keelin were coming up with a way to cleanse your brother," she explained. "When I got to the bell tower though all they were busy doing was making something to kill Marcel." When Scarlett went to argue with Freya that that wasn't the best way to spend their time, Freya countered that it was because she used to sleep with him. Freya was lucky Keelin was there to keep Scarlett from punching her in the face.

"You knew that she was going to get there eventually," Elijah tried to reason with her.

"You're not understanding," Scarlett argued. "Your brother has been having visions all day of your father telling him to kill Marcel. I'm gonna guess Marcel is having some of his own, since he's infected too."

"It wants them to kill each other," Elijah finished her statement and she nodded.

"She wants to take their power, that's the whole reason we got drawn out into those woods in the first place," she pointed out. "If your brother kills him, it's going to get exactly what it wants. Then, who knows what happens after that."

"What do you need?" he asked.

"Freya just wants to let Klaus kill Marcel," she reminded him. She knew Freya's point, that Marcel was still a threat to their family as he had the means to kill them. But right now, it wasn't the top priority. "I'm getting ready to track them, but I can't do it alone."

"I'll be there," Elijah assured her, hanging up the phone. As he turned, he noticed the girls had come outside to investigate.

"What's going on?" Hope was asking the three adults.

"You know what?" Elijah was saying now, wanting to keep this all from them. "Jackson was just saying he wanted to take you girls on a hike to show you the bayou, where Hope's ancestors used to live."

"Are you coming?" Aurora asked her dad.

"Ah," Elijah hesitated.

"You know what sweetheart," Jackson said, kneeling to the two girls. "Your dad's not really dressed for hiking in the swamp." He gave them both a smile. "What's say I show you around Hope's mom's old stomping grounds huh? And we'll be back in time to meet up with your dad for some star gazing."

"Thank you," Elijah thanked him as the girls went to help Mary clean up from lunch before heading out. He sighed as he watched Aurora. "I owe that little girl," he said sadly as this wasn't the first night he wasn't able to spend time with her.

"Start by keeping her mom safe," Jackson assured him. "They'll get what you're doing for them one day."

"I don't know if I want them to," Elijah said. The last thing he wanted was for those sweet, innocent girls to know what they were up against on a nearly regular basis. He wanted to preserve that innocence.

With Scarlett having already tracked where Marcel and Klaus were, Elijah left to meet her there, already hearing the struggle inside. The hollow had created a boundary spell to keep them out, but through her magic and channeling Elijah, Scarlett was able to break it. They got inside just in time to see Klaus breaking Marcel's neck, opting to end the fight without killing him.

Scarlett was needed back at the compound, with Klaus deciding to keep Marcel locked in the dungeon like he had him for so many years, even though as far as she could tell they were both free from the hollow's magic. To keep Marcel there and hidden it was going to take a lot of magic, involving both her and Freya. As Marcel woke, he found where he was and figured what had happened. What he hadn't counted on was Scarlett sitting down there.

"Sick way to gloat, isn't it?" he commented to her as he sat up fully; she sat on the ground outside the circle that was keeping him.

"I'm not gloating," she said back as she sat cross-legged. "I wanna know what you know."

"Shouldn't you know more about this than anyone?" he countered. "Given your sister and all?" She rolled her eyes.

"Vincent needs to stop running his mouth so much," she muttered. "He knows about this thing because he got wrapped up in it too."

"It wasn't Vincent, it was this witch Sofya knows," he informed her and she looked at him curiously. "What? Your family had wild power, what you were and weren't up to is probably big talk in the witch world." She rolled her eyes again.

"I assume this witch is what you were doing in that house?" she asked him. "Seeing as you weren't trying to fight Klaus in there."

"He told me how to purify myself from it," he started off.

"And you didn't think it was weird that this witch shows up out of no where and seems to know all this stuff about the hollow?" she stopped him. "You didn't think that was important to share?"

"You and I aren't exactly on speaking terms," he snapped at her.

"This thing wants my daughter," she nearly shouted at him.

"And this guy is a friend of Sofya," he said back, not seeing what she was so upset about.

"Who came to town with Lucien," she said back crossly. "If I remember right." Marcel just shook his head at her. "God, you're screwing her aren't you?"

"What's it to you?" he asked with a raised eye brow.

"I need to know if the person that's supposed to be helping me is sleeping with the enemy," she informed him; he just shook his head at her.

"He's just some witch she knows," he offered up to appease her. "Works for hire, kinda like her, I figured it was harmless as long as he knew how to clear me of this thing. If it worked, I was gonna pass it along." He shrugged. "Wasn't ever gonna bring him around the girls or anything."

"Who is it?" Scarlett insisted.

"I don't know," Marcel said in frustration. "Dominic something or other, what's it matter."

"Please don't say Roux," she practically begged. It was too much of a coincidence for her, that this witch would show up the same time as the hollow, that he would know so much about cleansing Marcel from it when it was going to take her and Freya days to figure it out.

"...how did you know that?" Marcel asked her, his concern rising now as well.

"You never did meet my brother in law, did you?" Scarlett finally asked.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," Sofya was snapping at Domenic that night at the old house where Marcel and Klaus had their fight. "You said Marcel would kill Klaus and that this would be over. Now he's missing!"

"I'm sure you can figure out pretty quickly who has him," Domenic said, observing the rose bush that was growing out of a puddle of Marcel's blood that was left from the fight.

"We had a deal," she argued with him. "Klaus dies. The hollow gets the power she wants and can manifest." She motioned to him. "You get your wife and son back. Win, win."

Domenic wasn't just a witch, new to the area that came to see Sofya. New Orleans was once his home, many decades ago, making him nearly as old as Scarlett. After Nicolette's death in the asylum, her husband nearly went mad trying to find what had caused her to go so crazy herself. That was when he came across her old journals, bringing him back to New Orleans. The hollow gave him the power he needed to protect him, to live as long as he did in order to bring her back, working as her high priest.

They had to wait for just the right time to strike, the ancestors keeping them in check in New Orleans for years. Unfortunately though, the ancestors link had been broken five years ago after Davina's death, by Davina herself. Without the ancestors, there wasn't much to stop them. Plus, with Scarlett's magic no longer buried and both Mikaelson girls coming into their powers, it seemed just the right time to attack and give the hollow what it wanted; to end the Labonairs and to absorb the LaFleur power. In return, it promised to resurrect Nicolette and allow the Roux family to flourish.

"Not all is lost yet," he assured her, cutting some of the thorns from the vine. "We'll get our chance."

"What's that one?" Aurora was asking her dad that night. They sat in one of Mary's porch chairs out on the dock, with Hope having dozed off not long ago inside on the couch. As promised, Elijah allowed Aurora to stay up late and look at the stars with him. Scarlett arrived in the bayou, careful not to disturb them, watching from the grass at the end of the dock.

"That grouping there," he motioned with his finger. "Is ursa major. And there," he motioned now. "Minor."

"Cool," Aurora said, looking all around. "Look!" she exclaimed suddenly. "A shooting star!"

"Quick, make a wish," he said, encouraging her to close her eyes and she squeezed them shut. Scarlett took this opportunity to join them.

"What did you wish for?" she asked as Aurora opened her eyes.

"I can't tell you, it won't come true," Aurora told her seriously, wrapping her blanket around herself more.

"You're right," Scarlett agreed with her, kissing her head.

"Are you all right?" Elijah asked her after kissing her once, continuing to sit with Aurora in his lap as Scarlett stood back up.

"It can wait," she assured him, not wanting to ruin this moment.

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