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A/N Please review and tell me what you think
Hayley, Oliver and Davina made their way back to Jackson's trailer. He was waiting for them, arms crossed against his chest, like they were late. Hayley stared at him as she helped Oliver sit down near the fire pit.
"How good are you at treating wounds?" She questioned Davina, without taking her eyes off of Jackson.
"I can try." Davina shrugged, reaching for the first aid kit Jackson had evidently left out. Hayley nodded to her and stepped over to Jackson.
"Well, you got him. Great. Where are Ansel and Hope?"
"Ansel was busy being a man. He should be right behind us. Hope went back to help him." Hayley explained.
"Jack, I have to tell you-." Oliver started.
"I already know, Ollie: you sold me out to Francesca."
"Look, I know that I can't make up for that. But, you need to hear this." Jackson looked away, grabbing a bottle of whiskey to drink from. "You're the one." He struggled to his feet, leaning against Davina's shoulder. Jackson stood defensively, grabbing a nearby staff, as if that was necessary. "You're the Alpha. Our people are not meant to be slaves! You can free them." He stopped as he started to cough up blood. He fell over, nearly taking Davina with him. Hayley rushed over to kneel beside him.
"Ollie? Ollie?" Jackson edged forward, unsure of what to do. He looked at Hayley. "What is wrong with him?"
"It's the witches. They said he had until midnight. They made good on that promise." Davina told them, setting her jaw. She'd seen enough death not to be shocked by it, but she still looked unnerved, at least. Jackson rushed over and kneeled beside Oliver as well.
"Ollie?" He propped Oliver up in his arms. "Stay with me!" Oliver was still coughing up blood.
"Jack..." He trailed off, unable to finish as he started bleeding from his eyes and nose. He fell limp in Jackson's arms and Jackson slowly laid him down on the ground.
Klaus ran into a crypt, still trying to shake off his experience with Ansel. His real father. But no. He meant nothing, Klaus had decided.
"Nik! Are you going to say anything?" Rebekah questioned, stomping in behind him with Kol at her heels. Klaus ignored her, which pretty much answered her question. He went over to Elijah, bound in chains and unconscious. He ripped down the object hanging from the ceiling, the one that kept the chains from being broken, and then got to work ripping down the chains. Kol went to help and Rebekah caught Elijah as he fell.
"Oh, Elijah…" She murmured, lowering him gently to the ground. Klaus kneeled beside him while Kol kept watch.
"Wake up, brother. Elijah."
"Nik, Bekah…" Kol warned. They both looked up at Esther as she entered.
"He won't wake. Not yet. Which gives you and I one last chance to discuss my offer." Esther focused on Klaus with a smile. He broke the cuffs off Elijah's wrists with more force than necessary.
"You promised me Elijah's safe return. Or, was that a lie, just like that ghoulish atrocity outside claiming to be my father, back from the dead?"
"Your father's return is real. I pulled him from the Other Side before it collapsed, left him in the Bayou to join the wolves. And, I used the execution of one of his own to draw him here, where I knew he'd find you."
"To what end? Besides my torment?"
"I brought him here to be the father you never had. To teach you to be the man you always longed to be. Once you are remade as a werewolf, you can join him." Klaus jumped to his feet, striding towards her. Rebekah tightened her grip on Elijah, as if to protect him. Kol stepped forward, but Rebekah reached up to grab his wrist, shaking her head at him to warn him to stay out of it. Esther could tell he was furious, but she held her ground.
"His return changes nothing!"
"It changes everything. It is my gift to you, Niklaus. This offer is your last chance at salvation. Reject me now, and you will live out your endless days unloved and alone. Do not refuse me out of some ancient spite-."
"Not spite. Hatred. A pure and perfect hatred that's greater now than the day I first took your life!"
"Why, after all I've done to explain to you, why must you persist-." Klaus completely lost his temper. He grabbed her by the throat, slamming her head against the stone wall behind her.
"BECAUSE YOU CAME FOR MY CHILD! MY DAUGHTER! Your own blood!" He screamed. Behind him, Rebekah flinched, her grip tightening on Elijah's unconscious form and on Kol's wrist. Esther was struggling to breath, which made it increasingly hard to speak:
"You... don't... understand!"
"MY. CHILD! My Hope! You watched from the Other Side and you knew what she meant to me! You came after her to torment me!"
"Niklaus! I had to!" She held up her hand and Klaus's nose started bleeding. Still, he managed to stay upright, tightening his grip on her throat until she whimpered in pain.
"You declared war when you came after my family. And, for that, I will make you suffer as only I can." He smirked through the blood pouring from his nose. "After all, I am my mother's son." He threw her down to the ground and rushed over to Elijah. He picked him up from Rebekah's arms and blurring out of the crypt.
Rebekah got to her feet and looked at Esther. Could this really be her mother? She supposed she should've expected betrayal by now, but it still hurt a bit to know that Esther was the one responsible for everything that had happened to Hope.
"Sister, come along." Kol nudged her arm. She broke her gaze away from Esther and nodded. They ran out of the crypt after their brothers, leaving Esther alone behind them.
"What happened here?" A new voice questioned behind Hayley, Davina and Jackson. They all jumped and looked towards Rebekah as she came into the camp. Kol was close behind her, looking bored and angry at the same time, which seemed to be his default expression.
"The witches cursed him." Davina explained, standing up and backing away from Oliver's body.
"Davina Claire, look at you, all roped into the business of the family you tried to slaughter." Kol told her. She shot him a dirty, defiant look.
"I thought Hope was dead!"
"Speaking of my favorite member of this freakish family, where is she?" He questioned. Rebekah was clutching her phone in her hand and Davina looked between them, recognizing how stressed they both seemed. Hayley stood up, wiping at her eyes and steadying herself to speak with them.
"She was with us at the cemetery. She sent us a text." Hayley handed over her phone and Rebekah snatched it, quickly reading the text.
"Went back to help Ansel. Be back later…. This is not Hope!" Rebekah flung the phone back in disgust.
"Excuse me?" Hayley questioned.
"She thinks more along the lines of 'went to kill people, see ya'" Rebekah explained, mocking Hope's American accent towards the end. "We were just at the cemetery and she's not there, Hayley. And she's not answering any of our calls. Cami and Marcel lost Finn; we're worried." She added quickly. Hayley hit a speed dial on her phone and put it to her ear.
"You know who this is. You know what to do. If I don't get back to you, it's because I don't like you. Here comes the beep." Hayley didn't leave a message; she could understand now why Rebekah and Kol were worried. She shoved her phone back into her pocket and looked at them.
"Alright. Let's go find her. Davina, are you up for a locator spell?"
"Yeah. Give me some blood and a map and I'll do it right now."
"Good. Jackson." She turned to the other werewolf, who was still staring at Oliver's body. She lowered her voice and went over to him. "Jackson. I'm so sorry about Oliver."
"I should've known something like this was gonna happen."
"No, you couldn't have known-."
"Just… Go find your daughter, alright?" That wasn't a suggestion; she knew he didn't want her there. Setting her jaw, she stood and followed the others away.
Hope woke up with a killer headache and the knowledge that she was royally and truly screwed. She was chained up. A quick look up told her that those chains were attached to the rafters high above. She was in some kind of old, run-down building, not the cemetery.
She heard voices behind her and craned her neck, trying to see who all was there. She couldn't see, but she heard only two voices and quickly knew it was Finn and Esther. She listened in, hoping for some useful information.
"Still burdened with hatred for me. For what happened to his daughter."
"He's a fool. I cannot believe anyone has permitted this girl to live! Your actions were to save this family! If this child lives-." Finn stopped and there was a moment of silence before Esther spoke again.
"Dahlia will return and she will come for us all…"
"So we must not let that happen." Finn's voice was so determined that it unnerved Hope. This was not a situation she wanted to be in, but his voice just made it all the worse.
"I don't suppose you guys could just let me go?" She called out, making her consciousness known. Both Finn and Esther were quick to walk over to her, into her line of sight. She looked at the bruise on Esther's head and the marks on her throat. "Problems?" She asked, just to be a pain.
"None of your concern." Esther told her quickly. Hope shrugged, as much as she could with her arms chained above her head.
"Hey, I'm a sympathetic girl. Tell me all the details."
"Do not speak to her." Finn snarled. She smiled at him.
"You really are mummy's little boot licker, aren't you?" Finn stepped forward, looking furious, but Esther held out a hand to stop him.
"We are not here because we are angry with her."
"Could've fooled me." Hope put in. Esther ignored her.
"We are here because she is a threat to everyone." As Finn backed away, Esther walked closer to Hope to look her in the eyes. "In another life, I would've loved you as one of my own…" She reached out to stroke Hope's cheek, but Hope jerked her head away. Esther sighed. "But now, we have to solve a problem. We have to figure out how to kill you, hybrid."
Hayley rushed into Elijah's room, instantly spotting Klaus leaning over Elijah. Klaus had his eyes closed and his nose was bleeding as he tried to get into Elijah's thoughts. Hayley sped over and ripped him away.
"What's going on?"
"I'm trying to enter Elijah's thoughts to wake him." He gestured towards Elijah, who was started to move around in his sleep. "Esther's locked me out." Hayley, momentarily distracted, walked over to Elijah and examined a wound on his neck.
"Is this rash a side effect of the witchy acid trip he's on?" Klaus frowned and went to examine the wound as well.
"I haven't seen this since I was a child. Mikael would return home from battle more blindly temperamental than usual, and our mother would use the petals of a rare merlock orchid to put him to sleep. She would mend his mind with a spell, and then wake him with the roots of the same plant." He looked at Hayley, his expression hopeful. "If she has access to it now, then maybe it also grows in the Bayou. You stay here with your wolves and mind the fort."
"Klaus, we have another problem." Hayley told him before he could rush from the room. Klaus looked at her in annoyance.
"If it's about your little pups, I am not in the mood for-."
"Hope's been taken. Davina's been trying to get a lock on her with a locator spell but it's not working… the last I saw her was in the cemetery, where your mother was."
"What?" Klaus asked, as if he'd misheard her.
"We can't find her, Klaus, and that means that Esther and Finn are doing something… horrible." Hayley couldn't bring herself to even suggest what was happening to Hope. Klaus's expression was unreadable, but Hayley knew some of the things going through his mind, because those horrid thoughts were going through hers as well. She expected him to shout at her, to blame her because she'd taken Hope to the cemetery in the first place, to tell her she was a worthless werewolf. But he was completely silent. Somehow, that was more frightening.
Finally, Klaus spoke again, his voice low and terrifyingly calm:
"Any contact we can trust, perhaps even those we don't, get them searching for her-."
"Klaus-."
"Kol knows magic, see if he can teach Davina anything that can help-."
"Klaus-."
"Rebekah and I will get to work searching for her. Whoever finds her first, get her away from my mother and Finn, kill anyone who tries to stop you-."
"Klaus!" She had to shout before he seemed to even realize she was speaking. He stopped, staring at her. "Help Elijah, alright? We can't leave him to suffer-."
"We cannot leave Hope to suffer!"
"We can't leave either of them to suffer. I don't know what plant you need. Get the plant, help Elijah. I get everyone working on finding Hope." Klaus swallowed hard and slowly nodded.
"Work quickly." He said, as if not ordering her around would've killed him. With that said, he rushed from the room.
Hope woke up with a gasp. Finn was kneeling in front of her, looking very disappointed that she hadn't stayed dead. He reached forward and yanked the stake from her chest. She let out a whimper of pain that she hated herself for letting out. She looked up at him again as he paced in front of her.
"Wolfsbane, Vervain, stakes… Is there anything that's gonna kill you?" He demanded.
"Well, I wouldn't know, would I?" She snarled back. Esther had acted like this was some gift, but it wasn't. They were torturing her, trying to kill her and failing. Each failure, it seemed, was only going to result in a more painful attempt the next time around.
Finn kneeled down in front of her again, this time brandishing a long, wicked sharp knife. Hope struggled uselessly against the chains again. Finn just looked between her and the knife, a psychotic glean in his eyes.
"I wonder what happens when I take out your heart?"
Jackson sat on the edge of the dock, drinking straight from a whiskey bottle. Hayley walked up behind him but he paid her no attention. His eyes were on the small boat in the distance, containing Oliver's smoking body.
"I'm so sorry, Jack." Her daughter's name was on the tip of her tongue, her plea almost getting out before she stopped herself. She couldn't just run up and beg for help, not before trying to comfort him. Jackson jumped to his feet, looking angry.
"This is bull, Hayley! Crescent tradition says you have a funeral at dawn, and no one is here! That loyalty... Loyalty's gone." Jackson started to walk away, but Hayley put up her arm to stop him.
"We're standing around moping over Ollie's body when there's a war to be fought. I understand that you have to grieve, Jack. But the pack needs it's Alpha." She took the bottle of whiskey out of his hands; the last thing she needed was for him to be drunk. "And I need your help. Please. Hope's missing. We can't find her, the witches must have her." She explained, putting the bottle down on the dock.
"That's not my problem." He brushed past her.
"Jack!" She whirled to watch his back as he walked away from her. She sped in front of him, blocking him again. "Hope was your friend!"
"I used to have a lot of friends. Look around, Hayley! Don't have many now."
"You have her! She is being tortured. She could be…" Hayley stopped. She couldn't bring herself to say the word 'dead'. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened then and focused on Jackson again. "Please. She needs your help. I need your help. Please."
"If the witches have her, you know she's dead." Hayley's hand blurred out and she punched him in the face. He fell onto the ground.
"Fine. Stay here and drink yourself to death, Jack! The pack will be better off without you if this is really who you are." Hayley ran away, blurring with speed, so that Jackson couldn't see her cry, so Jackson couldn't see how desperate she was and how much faith she'd misplaced in him.
Klaus kept up a quick pace as he went around the Bayou, looking for the merlock orchids. He was having a hard time concentrating, though. He stopped suddenly, listening. He heard breathing and a heart beat. He sped over to Ansel and pinned him against a tree.
"Stop following me. I have no intention of taking Esther's bargain, and no desire to be remade a mortal being. Now, kindly piss off. I'm in a hurry to help my real family." He started to stomp away, but Ansel called out to him.
"You seek the merlock orchid." Klaus looked back at him, suspicious.
"How did you know that?"
"I saw you carry Elijah home last night. Who do you think used to find the orchid for your mother to put Mikael to sleep? Without my help, you could search forever."
"My mother brought you back from the dead. My sense of strategy tells me that it wasn't to play a father-son game of hide and seek." He turned away and stomped away again.
"You can storm off in a fit of stubbornness if you like, but I suggest you do so toward the west." Ansel gestured towards the right direction. Klaus hesitated, but went that way. Ansel followed behind him. After a few minutes, he spoke again.
"A thousand years estranged and you choose to walk in silence? Surely you have questions for me."
"Just one: is there a way to cure Elijah without having to listen to the pointless ramblings of an old man? "
"I'm afraid the price of my expertise is conversation." He patted Klaus on the back and slipped past him so that he could lead him through.
"You know, I used to tell myself that my real father must have had no idea I existed. Otherwise, he'd never leave me to suffer under Mikael."
"Esther forbade me from seeing you. So, I waited, knowing that one day, you would trigger your curse and need your real father. When that happened, Mikael found me first. I fought him for you."
"Yes, well, your grand declaration is just a few years too late."
"Now, you joke, but I know you've always felt a void in your life. I've watched you from beyond for centuries. You've traveled all corners of the world, seen monuments erected, feasted on the blood of the history's most extraordinary men, but you've never found true peace. The only moments of joy in your life, however fleeting, have been simple pleasures. As you climbed the Himalayas, as you tended to your horses. Quiet days, teaching that boy Shakespeare-."
"Stop."
"I watched you paint. I watched you hold your daughter. I watched you grieve as you sent her-." Klaus grabbed him by the throat.
"I said, stop! A millennium of observing me… were your eyes closed as I slaughtered whole villages? Fed my way through thousands of innocents? Because, let's face it, I have a tendency to play with my food." Ansel stared at him; Klaus stepped closer so that they were almost nose to nose. "Have I made you proud, father?" He shoved past Ansel and kept moving without another word.
Davina let out a groan of frustration, slamming her open palms down onto the table. Kol just looked at her, waiting for her to get control of herself. She shook her head, loose locks of hair falling into her face.
"I can't do it! It doesn't matter how much power I have! They put a spell around her. I can't find her, no way."
"Well, as long as we're being optimistic about it." Kol shot back sarcastically. She shot him a look so scornful Klaus himself would've been intimidated by it.
"You want me to be optimistic? My best friend just got taken by your mother and is dead for all we know! And you want me to be optimistic? How about you get off your butt and teach me something useful! Hope says you know magic. Tell me how to find her!"
"If I knew how to find her, love, I would've told you by now."
"Oh, yeah, because Mikaelson's are all about family loyalty and honesty, right?" She scoffed, turning back to the table. Kol jumped to his feet.
"Hey! I may be a Mikaelson, but I'm nothing like the lot of them."
"Why do I hear yelling and not chanting?" Hayley demanded, storming into the room. She looked between them, waiting for a response that neither of them seemed brave enough to give at that moment. Hayley sighed, trying to calm herself down again. "Did you find her?" She asked Davina, her voice lower and calmer.
"No." That seemed to set Hayley off again; she started pacing, her jaw clenched tightly.
"When I find Esther-."
"That's it."
"What's it?" Hayley stopped pacing as quickly as she'd begun to look at Davina.
"What if we don't need to find Hope? We've been doing a locator spell on her and it won't work, but would Esther put an anti-locator spell on herself?" Davina questioned, looking between Hayley and Kol.
"Mother is a genius witch, but… It's possible she slipped up." Kol seemed unwilling to admit whether or not it worked either way.
"Don't you need something of Esther's in order to do a locator spell? Like her blood?" Hayley questioned. Davina considered her options.
"What about the blood of her children?" She glanced at Kol, hoping he knew the answer.
"That would work for her original body for sure, but…"
"Do you know the exact magical science of body-switching? Because if you do, by all means, give me a definite answer." Davina told him. He said nothing. She looked back at Hayley. "It might work." Hayley looked more hopeful than she had all day.
"Rebekah's with Elijah. I'll go get her to fork over some of her blood." Hayley rushed towards the door.
"Get Elijah's too!" Davina called after her, getting a sharp nod in response. She looked at Kol expectantly. "Well?" She pressed. Kol rolled his eyes.
"Oh, I'll donate some blood for the cause all right. But if this doesn't work, we're out of options and ideas." He felt the need to point out.
"Now who needs to be optimistic?"
Esther paced in front of Hope, who was hanging rather limply from the chains now.
"Are you done?" Hope finally choked out. Throat slitting, stake to the heart, heart removal, Vervain, Wolfsbane, Esther had even tried channeling her until it would've killed a normal witch. But Hope was still alive.
"I wouldn't do this if I had any other choice." Esther told her.
"Excuse me if I don't believe you."
"I don't want this to be painful."
"Still don't believe you." Hope sang weakly as she closed her eyes.
"You have to know what can kill you."
"Like I would tell you if I did."
"Witches are able to get into another person's head. Did you know that?"
"Don't care…" Esther walked over to her with quick, decisive steps. Even with her eyes closed, Hope knew exactly where Esther was. As she came close enough, Hope snapped out at her with her hybrid teeth. Esther jerked her hands back and glared at her.
"You act like a wild animal!"
"Are you going to send me to sit in the corner now?" Hope let her head rest against her arm, still held over her head by the chains. She couldn't use magic because of the chains, but she could still bring out her hybrid face, which seemed to unnerve, or at the very least annoy, Esther.
"I want you to know, I am sorry, Hope." Esther held out her hand. "Incendia!"
