The Abattoir was littered with bodies. None of them were from his side, but Klaus was already thinking about the cleaning bill and the way that Caroline would—
Shit what ever happened to Caroline.
Klaus turned around and looked around. Rebekah could not have seen her because she was traveling. And that only left Kol and he was dislodging a wolf from his calf.
"Bloody thing bit me," Kol whined to Rose. The other vampire smiled and Klaus stalked over to the two of them.
"Kol when was the last time that you saw Caroline?" Klaus asked. His heart was thundering in his chest. He could not lose Caroline. They were going to reconnect soon, he could feel it in his bones. Him and Caroline were meant for one another. They fit together like pieces of a puzzle. They made a whole picture the two of them. And Kol had been the last one to see his other half. "When did you last see Caroline?"
"The last time that I saw her. When we were all together in the room after the ambush," Kol said with his hands raised. Klaus felt something twist inside of him. Then where was Caroline?
Klaus turned to Marcel and frowned. "You mother had disappeared. Call the best witch in the city to find her. We have to make sure that she did not fall into the wrong hands."
Marcel nodded and walked off to get the job done. Klaus paced through the debris and bodies in hands on his face. God he should have never let Caroline alone for a minute. She did not need all this time to discover herself. She could do that with him right by her side. But she would have hated him had he bound her to his side. But look at the trouble that was causing right now. Look at everything that was happening.
Caroline was missing and he did not know where she was. Rebekah march over to him. She was dripping with blood and held her arm where the festering wound of a werewolf bite was. Klaus bit into his arm and Rebekah bent to feed.
"What is Katherine after?" Klaus asked.
"Other than to be a nuisance," Stefan called from his side of the room. He was limping over with a werewolf bite on his ankle. Klaus sighed and emptied out a vase that surprisingly did not fall in the tussle. He poured his blood into the shallow vase and shoved it at Stefan when he was close enough. Stefan drank the blood and Klaus pressed a hand to his face, ignoring the stickiness of the blood.
"No, she must be after something. Katherine is a lot like me in some ways. She has a plan for everything," Klaus said.
"Well the trollop sure has achieved her goal. All her friends are dead," Rebekah said. Klaus shook his head.
"No there is something that we are misunderstanding here. Something that she is doing that we don't know yet."
"Well whatever it is it can wait until we get Caroline back," Marcel said with a witch in his arms. This witch was your with blue eyes and brown hair. She was dressed simply in a white dress and her feet were bare. "This is my best witch, Davina Claire."
"Do you have something of the person's that I can use?" Davina asked. Klaus raised a brow. Usually witches needed a blood relative in order to find someone but this woman just needed something of their's? Maybe Marcel had grown up a bit in the time that he had left New Orleans. Marcel nodded as he guided them up the stairs.
"I left your and Caroline's room untouched. There should be something that she used," Marcel said. They all climbed the stairs and walked into the room. The room that he and Caroline shared in their time was dusty, but everything was untouched as Marcel had promised. Klaus walked into the room and it was like stepping back a moment in time. He sighed and went to her vanity.
"I need something that she used often. Something that she touched everyday would be best," Davina said as she walked into the room. Klaus immediately went to her vanity. There sitting sad and unused was her hair brush. She would use it everyday and even more on some days. She had a habit, a nervous tick that she could never get rid of, when she was nervous or upset she would brush her hair. Whether it was with her hand or her hair brush she would brush her hair.
Klaus did not know the last time that she had been to New Orleans but he hoped it had been recently. He picked the brush and rushed it over to Davina. She grabbed the brush and shucked off her shoes heading over to the bed. Klaus watched with narrowed as she laid herself down on the bed and sighed.
"I can feel her all around me. In this room. I think I will be able to find her. I should be able to find her." Davina said as she closed her eyes. She murmured latin under her breath trying to find Caroline. Klaus and the other stayed in the door way. No one said a word as they tried their best to allow Davina to focus.
A knock tittered at the edges of Klaus' senses. He turned, taking his eyes off of Davina for a moment before he turned back. The knock flitted at his senses again and he growled. Did no one hear the bloodshed and slaughter that had just taken place in the Abattoir? Did they not feel the specter of death that hung over this place? Who was foolish enough to knock at his door? Klaus pushed himself off the wall of the room and walked down the stairs.
He was going to deal with this person himself. He swung the door op0en, his fangs and veins descended despite the light of day. But he froze in his spot when he saw who was at the door.
"Hello, Niklaus. I see you have never taken care of that temper of yours."
Klaus felt small. Like he was a child again and he hated every moment of it. He looked into those eyes and he was back a thousand years. He looked into those eyes again and saw nothing but revulsion for everything that he was.
"Hello, Mother."

The hallucinations had started a long time ago. She was seeing everything from her father to her mother to her dearly departed sister. God she hated the visions with her sister the most.
Caroline groaned when the door to whatever basement she was being kept in was left open. Her mind was addled with visions of the past so it was hard enough to deal with the present. A shadow loomed at the top of the stairs. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, but the light lit them from behind so all Caroline could make out was the shadow. She sighed and pulled her limbs in closer to herself.
"You should go and see who has visited you, little sister," the voice of her sister whispered to her. She craved that voice. She craved the language of her mother country France. In the past she had always avoided the place. She was scared of the memories. Of the pain that being in a place so familiar, yet so different would bring to her.
In the time she had spent away from Klaus she had went back. She went back to the small village where she was raised, where her father had spent time making deals and selling things to the point that they had moved from the small village. The village where she lived was small maybe even smaller still, but it had modernized with time. The roads were short and narrow, but there were cars and the buildings had grown taller. She had walked down that street and stopped in front of the place where her home had once stood.
It was now a confectionary, one that smells of rising bread and sugar, but Caroline could not help but feel a sense of lost. Everything that she had once known had passed. And everything that she had once been had long since gone. There was only one person who knew who the Caroline of the past was and she could not go to her. She could not go to Katherine in the way that she wanted to.
Maybe it was time to let go of that Caroline. It was time to say goodbye to Carolina.
There was a sudden lurch in her stomach as she was forced from the ground. Whoever was at the top of the stairs had entered the basement and made their way down. Caroline sagged and sweat against the person. Whoever this was could barely support her weight b ut they were trying.
"Better to stop here," Caroline croaked from her parched throat. "Never… gonna… let me… go."
"We have to get out of here," the person huffed from Caroline's arm. They dragged Caroline closer and closer to the stairs. There was a moment, every fleeting, where Caroline worried about the sunlight. She cringed away from it, the way the light stung her and would surely do the same to her skin. But then she felt the familiar weight of her daylight ring on her.
They eventually reached the stairs and Caroline's legs felt like wet noodles, weak, pliant, and useless underneath her. The stranger shuffled her forward and Caroline sighed as she tried to raise a leg up to touch the stair. They made their way like that. The stranger by her side and Caroline trying to get her useless body to work just for a second.
The whole time they climbed the steps the voices in Caroline's ears never stopped. Every second she heard the voices of her mother, father, and sister humming in her ears. They told her things, things that they would have never known unless they became vampires themselves.
And she wept. Caroline ducked her head and allowed the tears to stream down her face because she felt so ashamed of herself. Her mother and father reprimanded her. They knew of everything wrong thing that she had ever done. They knew of all her shameful secrets. Her sister's voice praised her, telling her that she was so proud of the death and destruction that she had wrought. It was a game of praise and shame, where Caroline oscillated wildly between the two emotions.
Each moment they got closer and closer to the light. Each moment they stepped further and further away from the darkness of the basement below. Caroline cried out when they breeched the last step and they were both fully in the light.
Caroline panted harsh to both her ears and the ears of the person who helped her. Caroline took a moment to hear the world around her. The sound of the air whistling by and the birds chirping. And then she heard it. The heartbeat. It was fluttering, like they just worked themselves. Caroline turned to the person who had helped her out of the basement.
At first all she saw was a mop of brown hair. Though as her eyes focused she began to see more and more of the person. They were slightly shorter than Caroline and it was their heartbeat that was fluttering. It was them that had worked themselves getting Caroline up the steps. They had thrown Caroline's arm over their own shoulder and helped her all the way up.
"There," the person said, their voice high and girlish. "We need to leaved and now."
"What?" Caroline asked. The person shuffled them over to a chair and Caroline slid herself into the seat without a thought. With her rescuer out from under her arm, Caroline took take a moment to try and understand who they were. Caroline trained her eyes on the person. "Elena?"
Elena turned around and smiled at her, the smile bringing wrinkles around her eyes. Everything about the girl was the same. Everything. From the stick straightness of her hair to the light freckles that dotted her nose. Everything about this girl was a dead wringer for Katherine except the heartbeat.
The revived Elena darted around the room, which Caroline noticed was the kitchen. Elena rummaged through the dish that held the keys and the like and pulled out one key. Elena turned back to her and grabbed her.
"Come on. We need to get out of here."

"Are you not going to invite me in?" Esther asked. Klaus felt like his blood had frozen in his veins. Here was his mother, the mother that he had murdered, standing right in front of him in New Orleans asking to come inside. His body moved on autopilot, gesturing his mother inside. His mouth was dry.
Esther walked into the Abattoir and looked around at the bloodshed and carnage that was left behind. She tutted, "Really? You should keep this place cleaner. That was one of the few things that I did like about Caroline."
The sound of her name snapped Klaus out of his stupor. Caroline. He needed to find her. But first he needed to deal with the walking corpse in front of him. "And what exactly do you know about Caroline, Mother."
"Oh, don't give me that look. Do you think that I have spent all this time on the Other Side doing nothing more than twiddling my thumbs. I have watched you Klaus, all of you. And I do say that there are somethings that have to be changed about the way that you live."
"Where is Caroline, Mother?" Klaus asked through gritted teeth.
"And why, son, do you think that I would know that?" Esther said turning around to face him. Her clothing was impeccable. It was all beige and white and even the blood on the ground did not stain her boots. The blood knew better than to deal with the Original Witch. Klaus grit his teeth.
"Don't call me son," Klaus said.
"And why not? Was it not I who birthed you? I was the one who feed you at my breast. I clothed you and bathed you when you could not. I am your mother," Esther said. With each words she got closer and closer. Klaus felt the words hit him, but all they did was stir a burning low and hot inside of him. This woman was nothing to him. Not after what she did.
"No mother would curse her own child to wander the world with only half himself," Klaus said.
Esther neared him and reached a hand out. Klaus flinched at her touch, her hand cupping his cheek. In all the years that he had thought about his mother, she was nothing more than a cold figure. Someone who watched as Mikael beat him for simple reasons, a woman who bent to the wills of her abusive husband. She was cold. But her touch was warm.
Her hand was odd. Nothing more than human against his face. The very thought that his own mother could be warm sent his stomach into a nosedive.
"It was not a curse. You and your siblings were too strong already. And I could not have you becoming the apex predator of the world. That would not have kept the world in balance," she said, sliding her hand away from his cheek. "I did it all the protect you."
"Protect me? From what? My heritage? My birthright?" Klaus asked his voice growing louder.
"That part of you — your heritage — does nothing more than bring pain and suffering to others. It is what killed your brother Henrik. Why would you want to be a part of that?"
Klaus felt something inside of him break. Yes, of course. It was he who was born part monster. It was him that had something wrong with him. It was him with all the flaws. Klaus did not know why but he had hoped, somewhere inside of him a feeble kernel of hope and prayed that his mother was nothing like Mikael. That maybe everything that had happened to him was not just because his mother wanted to passive bystander to her own son's suffering. But this confirmed it.
He was nothing more than a nuisance, a monster, to both his mother and Mikael. So Klaus did what he always did.
He got violent.
Klaus lashed out, his hand going to strike his mother. Let him be the monster they believed. His mother raised her hand and his brain was on fire. Klaus groaned and his hand dropped, going instead to grip his head. He cried out as he felt the vessels burst in his head.
"I really should have taught you better manners. You must get it from your father," Esther said with a sigh. Klaus panted through his teeth and dared a glance at his mother. She looked so nonchalant. As though inflicting her own son pain was something that she did every day.
"Is that all I am to you a monster?" Klaus asked through his teeth.
"I have done you and your siblings a disservice in allowing you to live this long," Esther said. "I have wronged the world and inflicted them upon you. I am here to rectify that decision. It is time that you all come back to the Other Side with me and rest."
The spell dropped and Klaus was allowed to think again. He growled and clenched his fists. "And I suppose you are the reasons why my hybrids haven't been working."
"They were never meant to work, Niklaus. You would have to keep the doppelgänger alive in order to do that."
"Ah, and so that was why, you emphasized that she had to die."
"Of course. I knew you would follow my directions to the letter. I rather have only one monster to exterminate than a plethora of them. Too much work."
Klaus felt like everything he knew and loved about his mother was a lie. But who cared. The people that they loved always found a way to disappoint. He should not be feeling the disappointment welling in his gut, but he still did.
He had hoped that his mother was different.
She was not.
He smiled at his mother and leaned back, hands behind his back. "And how do you think to destroy us this time mother?"
"A simple linking spell should do."
Klaus smiled.
"Not today bitch."
It was with a simple chop to the back of the neck, that Rebekah had sent their mother tumbling to the ground. Her face was reach and blotchy with tear tracks staining her face. She looked at her brother and ran to him, hugging him.
Klaus felt the tears come to his eyes also, but he did not let them fall. That bitch did not deserve them.

Author's Note: Hey y'all! Back with another chapter! Reason why this is so late is because I got my first job as a teacher, caught covid, then meningitis and was in the hospital for a hot minute. Luckily I'm okay now and was able to write this chapter. See y'all next time.