Chapter 15 : Heartbreaks
Mikaelson's Mansion, Mystic Falls, The Other side
Claire traced a rune with her blood on Nicklaus' naked chest so his old one could lit up then disappeared. Theresa and she were finally at the exact point they had wished days ago. The Mikaelson brothers wanted to use the witchy magic of the Hollow to send a message to their family in the living world; therefore, they went to them in order to unlock Nicklaus' powers and they acted on their own initiative. Klaus wasn't a witch but they were a chance he could use the magic for a short period of time. Oh Claire could have screamed in relief! The brother believed they had found the solution on their own but it had been their plan from the beginning, only Theresa always thought it will be better if it came from them. Indeed, using the Hollow against Nicklaus' will would had been very tricky so they had done everything they could to remain on their side without rising suspicion including putting on an act of weakness and vulnerability. Nicklaus creased his eyes and nose at the smell of her blood; he touched his chest and brought his finger to his mouth. Claire pushed his hand away.
-"This is not some foreplay vampire." That was the only thing she could think of to make him stop. They were a slim chance he wouldn't dare since he had admitted in some way his attraction for her granddaughter to her. Nicklaus chuckled but did not carry one. "I can help you canalise the energy" Claire says placing her hands on each side of his temple from behind, careful not to stubble on the burning candles all around them "but I cannot do all of the work of my own." Nicklaus nodded slightly and read the spell written in his mother's grimoire that were place in front of him. After several attempts, the paper they wrote together at the end of a long debate did not move an inch however Nicklaus was already sweating and on edge.
-"I think it will be a long day." Elijah says glancing at Theresa.
The Salvatore Boarding School for the Young and Gifted –Headmistress' office, Mystic Falls, Living World
Caroline was staring at Professor Phyn's last email on her Smartphone, her emotions all around the place. Reading another person's private journal is like becoming their best friend or their confessor; you know their private thoughts, their intimacy and ultimately their true self. But to read the diaries of a member of your family take the experience to another level. Caroline never knew Claire Forbes, she died before she was born however with the journals she felt oddly close to her to a point her life became a part her. It was as if she could have taken the same path in life if destiny had chosen different. Claire had had a tough life; Caroline felt for her however her grandmother was a fighter. As a child, she witnessed the massacre of her birth parents by a demon then the execution of her adoptive mother by a fellow soldier. On the breaking point, traumatised, she only owned her survival to the haunting thought of revenge but she was only a human child so she turned to some group for help. The organisation in question composed by witches and human was ruthless. They trained children –yes children for God's sake!- to become grown up demon hunter; except Caroline realised that they considered themselves to be more soldier than hunter actually. At the beginning, she thought that 'demon' was her grandmother's way of speaking of vampires of even werewolves but further reading told her otherwise. Indeed, the organisation seemed to have turned them into some sort of demon/angel hybrid. To say that Caroline was surprise was an understanding, only she was much more disconcerted by the celestial side of the story than the other since she was used to the darkness that came with the supernatural world. Claire described with excruciate accuracy the pain she had went through when they had melted her body with demon and angel part. It reminded her granddaughter of Tyler's first transformation into a werewolf. At that point, Claire became immortal like her adoptive mother before her; in fact Caroline discovered that she was born in Japan in 921 A.D. It turned out that her grandmother's body changed to the point that the colour of her hair and eyes were modified through her transformation –from now one light-. After some sort of military training, she became for a few years an efficient weapon against demons but she released too much of her demonic power along the way and the organisation -who had foster her- tried to kill her as they were scared of what she had become. To this end, they used her grandmother and some of her friends who shared the same issue –Miria, Helen, Deneve, Jane- as cannon fodder for an already lost war. However Claire was a survivor, she could not be taken down so easily. She and her still standing comrades faked their deaths so they may have the opportunity to overthrow the organisation. They won but the cost was so high. Their fight had led to a civil war among Claire's people which had practically annihilated her kind. After that, her grandmother and what's left of her friends moved from town to town all around the world, trying to escape their bloody past until they went on separate ways. Every line that Caroline was reading was drenched in guilt, threatening to eat Claire alive. Indeed, her grandmother was feeling guilty about being alive when others weren't anymore, about starting a war that had led her to fight and kill her own and about everything else...guilt, guilt, guilt everywhere. She was even felling guilty about the death of Theresa, her adoptive mother. Claire confided in her private journals that she was executed by the organisation through the hand of fellow warrior because she had killed a human who was trying to rape her. That was their number one rule: no human killed. For the first time, Caroline felt very bad for reading her grandma's diaries. She had described that day like she had wanted to exorcise the darkness inside of her for herself not for anyone to share and her granddaughter just read it. Caroline understood that like no other since she never told a soul about what Damon did to her, not really. After she said goodbye to her friend, Claire tried to go on with her life, learning from day to day how to be human again, normal and Caroline could also related to that desire. Her grandmother met her grandfather eventually, they married, and she got pregnant so they moved to Mystic Falls where William still had family. She wasn't supposed to have a baby since her kind could not so she thought that it was because she had Theresa's flesh inside of her contrary to the others soldiers -who had angel and demon ones like her adoptive mother-. Claire finally confessed to her husband about what she was, he was astonished to say at least although he assured her that he loved her no matter what. However when they moved to Mystic Falls it got weird, William became aggressive toward her, on edge...but in the end he told Claire what he had just discovered: the eldest of his family were hunters, human ones and not long after she gave birth to Bill...she stopped writing. Caroline thought about Lizzy's hypothesis regarding spousal homicide with heavy heart but she held onto the argument that Claire would have been too strong for him or the rest of the family to handle –being a supernatural hunter and all-; it had to come from the outside -one of her kind perhaps-. But for sure she would not have left her baby behind from what she gathered about her personality in her diaries, so she really was dead. 'So heartbreaking!' Caroline thought sighting.
Mikaelson's Mansion, Mystic Falls, Living World
Hope walked around his father's study a bottle of Rebeka's favourite vodka in her hand. She brought it to her lips and took a draft of the alcohol. "The great Klaus Mikaelson, gone after his last 'father of the year' performance!" She exclaims rising her hand clasped around the vodka and spines. Of course no one answered, she was alone. She laid down on the floor "Yet I don't remember to have seen much of you these past years." Tears fall again along her wet cheeks "Tell me daddy, am I not as you have pictured me?'' and she sweeps them away. On an impulse she gets up and furiously stacks all the painting representing Ms Salvatore that she had found. "Is it because I am not hers? Is it because she is not my mother?!" she yells enraged as she spills alcohol on the offending canvas. She finally stared at her work and ordered her magic to run: "Incendia".
Ending Song: Ciaria – paint it, black
AN: There it's done! I am curious now: Is this what you expected for Hope? KC time is coming in the next chapter! Love and Peace.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything