Cleo-Hayley- shoved her phone into the pocket of her cardigan after updating Kim, her sister, on her search for Emma. She didn't tell her family she was pregnant, she especially wasn't going to tell them it was with the Original Hybrid's baby. She hadn't even spoken to him in two days and she didn't want to approach him after watching him dagger Elijah.
Hayley walked downstairs, hearing Klaus arguing with someone. When she reached the bottom of the stairs she saw Klaus and a blonde who she assumed was his sister.
"Ah, Hayley. This is my little sister Re-" Klaus started, motioning to his sister who had turned around.
"Emma?" She cut him off, staring at Rebekah with wide eyes.
"Cleo?" Rebekah countered as she took a step forward.
Hayley stepped back, faltering when she saw the look on Emma-Rebekah's- face. "No, no, no…" Hayley looked between the blondes with wide eyes, hearing heabeat getting faster. She had been looking for Emma for over a year, and it turned out she was actually an original vampire. She was not okay.
"Rebekah?" Klaus asked quietly. "What's happening?"
"Nothing, Nik." Rebekah gave him a smile they all knew was forced. "Go meet Marcel, I'll stay here with Hayley."
"Alright," he nodded after a few moments before heading towards the door. He could tell that Rebekah knew the wolf and they obviously needed to talk. "Welcome home, little sister."
A few minutes after Klaus left, she spoke, dropping the American accent. "What the hell?"
"It's great to see you too, Cleo." Rebekah, Emma, grumbled.
Ignoring every negative feeling, Hayley pulled her into a hug, smiling when she was instantly squeezed back. They stayed in the hug for another ten minutes before they finally moved to a couch.
"I suppose you want to know how Im Rebekah Mikaelson and Emma Gilbert?" Rebekah said, continuing when Hayley nodded. "Well, when I was daggers I was able to get into the mind of the person who was transporting the coffins and got him to realize me for small amounts of time. It wasn't really compulsion, so it didn't matter if he was on vervain or not. Eventually, I was able to escape. The man would contact me if Nik was ever going to open my coffin. When I left, I went as far away from Nik as possible and I ended up in Australia. When I got there, I compelled a couple who were thinking about having another kid anyway, the Gilbert's, to think I was their daughter. They picked my name, Emma, and I fit in the family as Elliot's older sister. I enjoyed being a big sister again…" Rebekah tailed off.
"I had a witch basically mass compel the town that I had been a part of the family the whole time. We became friends, then we met Rikki. When I had a tail after the moon poll incident, I was surprised. I'm an original, that magic shouldn't have worked. It meant that I had magic, and you can't have magic and be a vampire, so I decided to look into it. I got in contact with my, would you call it now, godmother? Anyway, I talked to Ayana and her theory was that while we didn't keep our magic after turning, nothing was said about magic on top of our immortality. After two years, I got a call from the man who was watching the coffins saying that Nik was about to open mine but he got a call. I compelled the Gilberts to tell everyone I was going to visit relatives in America when in reality, I was going back in my coffin with a dagger in my chest. I'm a hybrid now, just not like Nik, I'm a vampire/mermaid hybrid."
"I guess it's my turn now." Hayley said after a few moments. "Well, I was in the system for a six years before the Sertori's adopted me. I was with a foster family for three years, the Marshall's, before they put me back in the system. I broke my curse when I was 13. I was at party and I shoved someone who was trying to hurt me, he fell, was in the hospital for two days but ended up dying from head trauma. My parents found out the next full moon when I did, but we kept it a secret from Kim. I don't know how, but I didn't shift the night we ended up in the moon pool, probably because it was making me a mermaid. I was worried that you and Rikki would find out about me being a werewolf, but it turns out, I don't have to shift every full moon, I just get moonstruck. But it turns out I can shift to avoid becoming moonstruck. Last full moon I didn't shift or get moonstruck, but I guess that's because I'm pregnant."
"I can't believe you slept with my brother!" Rebekah exclaimed.
"Your family is really pretty!" Hayley defended herself with a huge grin. "Anyway, I came to America to look for you, ended up finding Tyler Lockwood untiring your brother's hybrids and followed him back to Mystic Falls. He introduced me as Hayley and it just kind of stuck."
"What happened while I was daggered?" Rebekah asked, leaning into the couch.
"A lot." Hayley started. "We met another mermaid, Bella, she gave us necklaces but I turned mine into a ring." Hayley lifted her hand so Rebekah could see, before continuing to tell her everything that happened from Kim's first boyfriend to stopping a comet. "Everyone went to college, Rikki and I agreed to keep looking for you and stay in contact."
"You still have your locket." Rebekah commented, nothing that Hayley was playing with it.
"Never took it off."
"Me either," Rebekah lifted hers from under her shirt. "I can't believe you stopped a comet."
The girls sat in a comfortable silence, staring at the ceiling before Rebekah stood up. "I'm going to check the basement for Elijah, do you wish to come?"
"Not really, but I will." Hayley stood, following Rebekah.
"The governor had lots of secret rooms, I'll show you his favourite." Rebekah said as they arrived in a dusty cellar room.
"These are Kol and Finn's coffins," Rebekah pointed to them as she said her brother's names. "They were killed by the doppelgänger and her friends in Mystic Falls."
Hayley put a hand on Rebekahs arm. "Im sorry,"
Rebekah shook her head. "I will see them again, one day. We will all see each other again."
She nodded to her coffin next. "That one's mine."
"He keeps your coffins on standby." Hayley said bluntly.
The blonde nodded. "Nik likes to be prepared for when we disappoint him or we need to run. Elijah's isn't here- he stashed him somewhere else."
Hayley sighed. "It's always the pretty ones that are crazy."
Rebekah grinned. "Welcome to this mess of a family, Cleo. You should ran the moment you realized Elijah was gone."
"Problem with that great plan of yours." Hayley rolled her eyes. "The witches here put a hex on me, linked me to one of the crazy ones. As long as I'm carrying your niece, I can't leave New Orleans, they'll kill me if I do."
"Well, we best find a way to break that hex. Can have any witches trying to kill my best friend now, can I?" Rebekah grinned.
"Of course not." Hayley grinned back. "Now, can we go get some food? Your brother is awful at grocery shopping."
━━━ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ━━━
Hayley waited on a bench while Rebekah was talking to someone. She had only been sitting for a few minutes before she heard a voice behind her.
"Dumb move, coming into the Quarter. You're coming with me, wolf." The vampire demanded, spitting out the last word as if it were poison.
When he was close enough, Hayley punched him in the jaw before lifting her knee, causing him to groan in pain. She spun around and saw two more vampires.
Rebekah showed up, calmly setting down the bags in her hand before snapping the neck of one vampire and ripping out the heart of the other. "Now, that's no way to treat a pregnant lady." Rebekah looked down at the bodies before smiling at Hayley. "And I do hate bad manners."
Rebekah raised an eyebrow at Hayley. "Nik is pissed at us."
"Sounds like him." Hayley agreed. "Did you get strawberries?"
"We got everything on the list, Cleo. We have enough fruit to last us years at this point." Rebekah tilted her head. "Why do you smell like wolfsbane?"
"Some lady bumped into me earlier who smelled like it." Hayley shrugged, grabbing her bag off the bench.
She shook her head. "No, it's a lot stronger than that."
Hayley felt her pockets, her nose scrunching up when she felt a vial with a paper rolled around it. She pulled it out and read the note. 'Put a few drops in a cup of tea and it will work. Do the right thing.'
She looked up at Rebekah, who stared back.
"He's not going to be too happy about that either."
━━━ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ━━━
They returned to Klaus throwing a final body onto a small fire in the courtyard. He turned, giving them a fake smile.
"This is why I told you never to leave the house. Werewolves are banned in the Quarter. I had a plan, and your little nighttime stroll put it all in peril. Leave him!" He shouted to Rebekah who had taken a step towards the pile of bodies.
"You've done enough, don't you think?" He waved his hand. "Leaving a trail of bodies like a road map to my door?"
"It wasn't like she was unprotected, I at least went with her." Rebekah told him. "And don't give me that crap about having a plan. You've had all the time in the world to execute a plan and no one's seen you do a damn thing! Elijah made a deal to protect your child, but you obviously don't give a damn about the child or Elijah, because what have you done to honour it!"
"I have done everything." Klaus seethed. "Let me spell it out for you then, shall I? From the day I arrived, Marcel hasn't trusted me. From day one, he's had his vampires ingest ingest toxic vervain which as you know, little sister, protects them from mind control." Klaus grabbed one of the vampires from the pile. "And this one- I'm gonna drain him of vervain, compel him to believe his mates found religion and moved to Utah, so that he can explain why he lost three more vampires tonight."
Rebekah and Hayley shared a look, following Klaus as she dragged the vampire inside the house. "Does anyone have any more questions? No? Good, because I have a question. Hayley, what were you doing in the bloody French Quarter in the first place?"
"Pretty well all of the food here is expired and I get hungry." Hayley told him. "Rebekah went with me so I wasn't in the quitter alone, we split up for a few minutes before we were coming back here then the night walkers came."
"Leave her be, Nik."
Hayley watched as he visibly calmed down. "I'm going to head upstairs, i'll see you two in the morning."
"It's okay to care." Hayley heard Rebekah say as she entered the room she was staying in. "It's okay to want something. That's all Elijah was trying to do, all he's ever wanted for you. All we've ever wanted."
━━━ ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ━━━
Hayley was almost asleep when Klaus entered her room, picking up the wolfsbane.
"I didn't use it. I never would've." Hayley told him quietly, putting it together that Rebekah had told him about it.
"You're awake."
"I barely slept." Hayley sat up, leaning against the headboard. "This house is like a sauna."
"What stopped you?" Klaus asked, not looking at her. "You could have been free of all this… of me."
"I could have." Hayley agreed, but shook her head. "There's a part of me that always wanted a kid, or maybe it was because my birth parents gave me out and my next set of presents put me back in the system. I didn't have an example of good parents until I was almost seven. I want to be better than that, I want to protect my child."
"I'm beginning to think we're a lot alike, you and I," Klaus said after a few moments. "We're both castoffs who learned to fight when we're backed into a corner."
Hayley looked up at him. "Well, we're backed into a corner now."
"Ah, that we are. It's time to fight…little wolf." Klaus placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently before going to leave.
Hayley stopped him. "The whole thing with Marcel- what happened?"
"I made Marcel everything that he is. I treated him like a son, and when my father chased me and my family away from New Orleans a hundred years ago, we believed Marcel was killed. We each mourned- in our own way. Yes, when I returned, I found out that not only had he survived, he had thrived. Instead of seeking us out, instead of sticking together as one, he made a choice to take everything my family had built and make it his own. Now, he is living in our home, sleeping in our beds. That 'M' he stamps everywhere, it's not for 'Marcel'. It's for 'Mikaelson'. I want it all back, and if I have to push him out to get it, that's exactly what I'll do." He turned back to look at her from his spot in the door frame. "I'll have someone see to the air conditioning."