She awoke to find him watching her in the golden morning sunlight. His hair was rich against the creamy linen pillowcase, and his eyes soft.

Neither of them spoke.

He reached his hand to lightly stroke down her arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake and then encircle her fingers in his own. Hayley smiled softly at him.

Elijah.

Not a dream…

His mouth tilted crookedly, and he reached to pull her to him. He kissed her indolently, as if they had another five years to make up for the last. Hayley closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel him against her, to taste him, to breathe him with all her vampire senses.

"Hayleeyyyy…" his whisper was a warm breeze on her neck where he nuzzled into her. "How are you here now?"

She held him closer.

"I probably shouldn't be…" She finally said with a sigh.

Elijah pulled back and rolled her to her back, looking down at her dark hair mussed against his bed. His eyes found hers. "Don't say that. You are an answered prayer."

"You wanted to leave us. Forget us. For a reason— a good reason…"

He considered. "Perhaps. But I also didn't know."

"Know what?"

He tilted his head, and studied her shoulder… a long finger traced her bare collarbone. He leaned down to kiss it. "How utterly alone I would be", he said against her skin. "Without you, how lost…"

Hayley had visions of him in the white hallway outside the Red Door… She shivered. Lost Elijah broke her heart… and scared her to death. Had it been like that? If he'd forgotten "always and forever", hadn't he also forgotten the nightmares that haunted him?

"Was there no one…?" She wasn't sure she really wanted to know. But she also wanted to believe he hadn't been so very lost or broken. He laid his head down on her chest and his arms held her firmly. She stroked his back.

"There was one." He said after several moments.

At his words Hayley noticed a slight racing of her heart. It was the way he said it: there was one. She tried to steady her blood, but not before he heard it. He chuckled against her. But then he brought his mouth to her nipple, enveloping it, and then her heart was racing for a better reason than jealousy.

"Did you love her?" Hayley couldn't help herself. Her fingers mussed in his hair.

"Shhhh…" He shushed her, now playing the other nipple, both breasts held in his hands.

"What was her name?" She pressed.

He stopped his kisses and looked at her thoughtfully with his chin on her breastbone, before answering. "Her name was Antoinette."

Antoinette. Fancy.

Hayley chided herself for being a catty bitch. She tried to bring lightness to her voice. "And did you? Love her?"

"I did." Elijah answered her. It felt like a hot poker to Hayley's heart. She tried to keep her face still. Open. "I did, yes. But I wasn't…myself. Not really, was I?" He asked of her, quietly. She saw trepidation in his eyes.

You're such an asshole, she said to herself.

Hayley took his face in both her hands. She pulled him in for a kiss and then she said, pressing their foreheads close "No, but its ok Elijah. I didn't want you to be alone. You should be loved… You should always be loved. I'm sorry. I have no right..."

He suddenly rolled and pulled her atop of him, so that her breasts and body pressed him into the feather bed. He pulled the curtain of her hair over one shoulder, and stroked down her back.

"You have every right." He told her. His hand ran up her ass and down her lower back.

"No I don't." Hayley admitted, begrudgingly. "We weren't together. You'd moved on. Like, really moved the fuck on."

Elijah chuckled, and she felt it in his chest beneath her. He was so solid and real.

So here.

His eyes were amused.

"And did you? Did you move 'the fuck' on? …No, on second thought, don't tell me."

But Hayley was suddenly very serious.

"No."

The smirk fell from his lips. He searched her.

"No?"

"Never."

He was very still beneath her weight. The open window rustled the curtain. His hand stilled its musings over her skin.

"…Never? No one?" Did his voice crack?

Hayley's heart skipped when she heard it, and she was filled with love for him.

She adjusted to her knees above him, and his eyes raked over her body, and came back to meet her green gaze. He was suddenly very ready. She rose up… and slowly took him in as she came down. Both of them sucked air between their teeth. His hands found her rolling hips, griping.

"No one. Not love." Hayley answered between what was becoming painting breath. Fire was building within her. He set her ablaze so easily.

This man set her on fire.

"It turns out a Michelson isn't that easy to replace. Not you, anyway…"

Elijah sat up and clutched her body tighter, slipping deeper within her.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I left as I did..." He offered, a slight desperation in his words. "Please forgive me, please…forgive me."

Her arms wrapped around his neck and they moved together in the dappled light from the window.

In the days that followed, they rarely left his apartment behind the piano bar, so wrapped up and hungry were each of them for the other. Between bouts of lovemaking, when Hayley pushed the reality of what she'd done as far from her mind as she could, they spoke of their time apart. They spoke of family, and she hesitantly told him of Hope. Of Rebekah, Cole, Freya and Klaus… She feared even speaking of them would somehow invite the Hollow near him. And in these moments, although his face would soften when he heard of Cole and Davina being married—

That's as it should be.

-or of Freya still in the compound steadfastly searching for a cure, with her love by her side—

She's a Viking warrior, that witch…

-that Hayley feared she'd selfishly endangered him. She had moments of heart stopping regret and knowing she should have stayed where she was. But, it was when he asked of Klaus that she felt the fear most intensely.

Because he has been the reason for the forgetting.

Because the brothers had spent a thousand years walking the earth together.

Because Elijah loved him best of all.

…Together they sat in the living room, after a simple dinner brought to them by David, each on either end of the settee, legs entangled comfortably. Elijah now looked at the painting and knew it for what it was. He studied it and she wondered about his thoughts, the fear beating a soft beat inside her she hoped he couldn't hear.

Hayley had told him that a few years earlier Klaus had stopped calling. He'd stopped answering her calls on Hope's behalf, as well. Hayley now only got word of him through Freya- And really it was Keelin he texted or briefly called, gruffly leaving messages or directions and hanging up.

"It's as if he's afraid of the people…" Hayley started then trailed off.

"— who love him," Elijah finished.

She didn't answer. It was best not to give voice to the fact that Klaus was…Klaus.

"He's come near," he said. Hayley just quietly watched him, trying to read him. She couldn't tell if he was angry or sad.

"But you didn't know him?" She finally queried. "When you found the painting?"

"No. Not at all. I don't even think I saw him, actually… Except…Perhaps once?" Then his face lit with the memory, "Yes. He was here once!"

"Here? At the bar, here?"

Goddamnit Klaus.

"Yes, yes…that was him! He put a large bill in my tip cup. It was before Antoinette…" His voice was wistful with the memory, but then he stopped.

Hayley smiled knowingly. They had already talked all about Fair Antoinette of the Dark, as she'd started to refer to her in her own mind. It was nicer than 'that other bitch'…plus, Hayley had to admit she really didn't sound like a bitch at all.

Maybe a chickenshit.

"Before Antoinette what? Yeah, go on..." He smiled at her.

"It was a bit of time after I came and found her here. After New York… But before she left." He finished, taking a deep drink of the wine in his hand, his gaze upon the painting. The tree seemed to glow in the fading light of the day.

Nope. Maybe she was a bitch, Hayley thought, drinking her own wine. A chickenshit bitch.

After all, didn't she up and leave him? Breaking his heart for no reason? Hayley recalled the story: The two had taken a trip to Paris, and then on to Amsterdam. One night strange vampires— quite a large group of them—had cornered them down a dead street speaking of justice and revenge… Elijah fought them all. Killed them all, before they could hurt Antoinette- or even look at her. He slaughtered them all. Hearts dead on the old cobblestone, blood running into the canal like water.

It was as easy as breathing.

Of course it was.

But the next night, as Elijah slept in their bed Antoinette was gone. Like a thief in the night.

Elijah had no idea where she could have gone, but he knew she'd left on her own accord. She'd left him a familiar note scratched in her swirly handwriting onto the hotel stationary.

Don't look back.

She'd just been scared, Elijah told Hayley.

Scared! She sounded like a fucking coward to Hayley. Like some sort of vampire princess who couldn't handle life, and needed her ass kicked.

She simply didn't understand, Elijah tried to explain, why his past came to find him. He couldn't remember who he was then, but, he admitted, he'd figured it out. After meeting Marcel in New York, he had figured out who Elijah Michelson was…the episode in Amsterdam solidified everything he'd learned.

The Michelson's were death itself.

So he could hardly blame Antoinette for her fear even if she didn't know who he really was. He had only hoped she'd come back to him… And so. He returned to the village and waited. Alone.

And he'd been waiting, still. Until now, he'd told her.

…At the time she heard this, Hayley had had a visceral wolf-like reaction to this news that the love of her fucking life had been here waiting for another woman to return to him. She'd kissed him sweetly and deeply in the sheets where she'd just fucked his brains out, and gone to take a shower alone.

Where she could cry and calm herself under the warm water.

It had taken a while.