Chapter 8:The Homestretch

"Juice!" Dominik cried.

"I told you, no juice right now, buddy. Have some of your water, okay?"

For the third time in as many minutes, a green sippy cup with dinosaurs on the side tumbled to the floorboard behind the driver's seat, the sound of it falling followed quickly by a petulant cry.

The kids were tired and cranky. After leaving Philadelphia the previous morning, the four of them had driven all day, and then spent about seven hours in another roadside hotel, only to get up painfully early and get back on the road again first thing this morning. At this point, Cami felt like the adults were probably just as ready to be out of the car as the children.

"Dominik, if you throw that cup down one more time, you're not getting it back," she warned, reaching behind Klaus's seat and handing the cup back to the whining toddler. Almost immediately the cup sailed between her and Klaus, clattered against the dash, and dropped straight to the floorboard below.

"That's it!" Cami declared, grabbing the cup from between her feet and depositing it, with a bit more force than necessary, in the cup holder next to her.

"Juice!" exclaimed the young boy, pointing to the cup.

"Dominik," she warned.

"Juice, Mama," he whined, squirming in his carseat. When she didn't respond right away, he arched his back and pulled at the shoulder straps of his seat, screaming, "Juuuuuuice!"

"Dominik Reece Mikaelson!" she admonished, turning in her seat to face him, fully. "Enough!"

He kicked his feet, sullenly, still crying.

"One," she warned, her tone low and steady.

The movement of his feet slowed and stopped, but the whiney cry persisted.

"Two," she said, raising her eyebrows.

The whining slowly dissolved into a silent pout.

Cami faced forward and flopped back in her seat, rubbing her eyes, tiredly. "Ugh…are we there yet?"

Klaus smiled, tightly. "Unfortunately, we still have about three more hours. We're in the homestretch now though, as they say." He turned down the radio, using the button on the steering wheel, and asked casually, "Dominik Reece Mikaelson?"

"Reece was Shawn's middle name," she replied, rolling her head to face him, though not lifting it from its resting place against the seatback.

Klaus nodded, but remained silent.

"But that's not what you're talking about," she surmised, looking down at her hands. She sighed. "I told you before, I thought he…I thought that you were..." she struggled, searching for the right words. Finally, she settled on, "I thought you and I were married." Picking, distractedly, at her thumbnail, she half-whispered, "My ID says Camille Mikaelson, Klaus. I mean…what was I supposed to think?"

Klaus recalled how easy it had been to compel an official to get new identification for Cami before he'd sent her and Hope on their way. If only everything that had come before and after that had been so uncomplicated.

Almost a full minute passed in which neither of them said anything. The whir of the tires on the pavement and the low murmur of talk radio the only discernible sounds. When the silence became too much, Cami mumbled into the quiet, "I can change the name…he's too young to understand anyway."

Klaus could hear the sadness in Cami's voice, and it grieved him that he was the one causing her pain, but the situation was painful to him as well. He glanced in the rearview mirror at the boy who sat at the center of the problem. Tears, already forgotten, sat drying on his chubby, pink cheeks. The boy smiled at Hope, flashing dimples that remained hidden unless he grinned broadly enough to reveal them. He laughed at something she said and covered his mouth with his hand.

Klaus looked back toward the road ahead.

"It's a good name, Camille," he said, cryptically, not agreeing or disagreeing with her.

Now, in this van, with two cranky toddlers in the backseat, was not when or where Cami wanted to have this particular conversation, so she simply remained silent and turned back to the children.

She listened as Hope told Nik his favorite story; the one about the polar bear who lost his way and ended up at the beach. The story was actually from a book that had belonged to Hope and had somehow become Dominik's somewhere along the way. Cami watched Hope's eyes dance as she recounted the details of the story, her retelling animated and vibrant. Nik laughed gregariously forgetting all about his earlier tantrum.

Hope was great at that, at distracting him, comforting him. She always had been.

Cami thought back to when both children were mere babies. Hope had been about a-year-and-a-half old when Nik was born. By the time she was two, the girl had been an expert at entertaining her baby brother. She'd replaced his pacifier when he'd dropped it, knew his favorite blanket and toys, and no one had made him laugh as quickly or as hard as Hope had. She'd doted on him like a little mother hen, and as far as Nik was concerned, Hope had hung the moon and arranged every star in the night sky.

He still wanted to do everything his big sister did, and he wanted her approval that he'd done it well.

The two of them were inseparable.

Cami sighed, wondering how this new stage of their lives was going to work. She feared what would happen once they arrived in New Orleans. She had no idea how to explain to Hope that Hayley was her birth mother, her real mother. Even the thought of that term…real mother, pressed against Cami's heart with an almost debilitating weight. And the thought of the children being separated from one another, of the emotional impact that would undoubtedly have on them, plagued her. For now, at least, she felt certain Hope would remain with her and Nik, as long as they lived in the compound with Klaus and Elijah, if only because Hayley could not care for the girl whilst trapped outside of her human form. But what if they figured out how to reverse the curse, as they hoped to…what then? Would Hayley demand Hope's immediate return? Or would the three of them, she, Hayley and Klaus, all share some sort of strange, progressive custody agreement? She had no idea. And as murky as that whole situation was, it didn't even touch on the other big issue she had to deal with.

She had to find out, definitively, who Dominik's father was…how he'd come to be. She couldn't get it all to make sense in her own head, and not knowing was going to wreck her. She had to find out now while Nik was too young to understand all that was going on.

She needed to talk to Davina.

As much as the girl disliked Klaus, she and Cami had been close once, and Cami felt certain that she would help her find out the truth. Klaus had even said that Davina had tried to protect Cami and Hope by refusing to help bring them back to New Orleans. Clearly, in her own way, the girl had tried to help her. If someone had cursed her or manipulated her in some way, she felt certain Davina could shed some light on it…and if Klaus was Nik's father, she thought Davina could figure out how such a thing was possible. And besides all that, Cami missed her. She hadn't had many friends in the years since she'd been gone, mainly because she'd spent all of her time either working or being with the kids, and she'd missed the comfort of a close friend. As soon as they made it back to New Orleans she would go see Davina. As hurtful as the truth might be, she needed to discover it and deal with it, whatever it was. She had to get some answers…for herself, for Nik, and even for Klaus.

She hadn't missed the disappointed look he'd worn as he'd made his way down the hallway to his own hotel room the night before. Unlike their first night on the road, when circumstance had forced them all to not only lodge together, but to share the same bed, their second night had provided no such serendipitous condition. The weather had been clear, there had been plenty of rooms in any number of hotels, and there had, therefore, been no reason for them to share a bed or even a room.

Klaus had helped her and the children to their door, carrying not only her bag and his own, but a shoeless Nik as well. He had ushered them inside and placed both her son and her bag onto one of the queen-sized beds, before excusing himself and making his way to his own room. She had gone to the door, catching it before it swung all the way closed, and called out to him to thank him. He'd looked back at her, nodded wordlessly, and then continued down the hall to his room. She'd watched him place his keycard in the slot in the door, and just as she'd stepped back to go inside her own room, she'd seen him look back one last time. It was then that she'd caught the look of longing on his face.

Her heart had ached then, seeing a man that she cared a great deal for…a man who she knew had experienced so much more than his fair share of loss and alienation when it came to family over the years, clearly longing to be a part of a family that she herself could offer him. If she were brave enough…

But was she? Could she trust him not to hurt all of them?

She had no doubt that he wanted to spend time with Hope. They'd gotten along famously since they'd first been reintroduced. But it didn't feel like it was just Hope that he wanted. There'd been a few moments in the hotel the morning after they'd all shared a room where they'd felt like an actual family. She was doubtful the feeling had been lost on him. They had been nice, those moments they'd shared…but painful at the same time. She'd felt like she was catching a glimpse of a beautiful possibility that would probably never be. The reality was, Hayley would, at least to some capacity, resume her role as Hope's mother, which meant that whatever the exact outcome, Cami's relationship with Hope would never be the same. The other reality was that, despite what she believed, what she felt in her heart, Cami might never be able to convince Klaus that Nik was his son…and if the worst were true, if Nik turned out not to be Klaus's child…Cami was not so naïve to believe that Klaus would forgive whatever indiscretion he would undoubtedly imagine her to have committed and love her and her son anyway.

She could tell there were parts of him that wanted them...all of them, as a family. But she wasn't certain how big of a part of him wanted that…or how conditional that desire was. She was certain he wanted Hope, and she was certain he had cared about her, at least to some degree, once upon a time…but she had no idea about the rest.

How much had he cared for her? Did he still have feelings where she was concerned, other than that of friendship and gratitude to her for caring for his child? And Nik? If Nik was not his son, would his interest in them as a family remain intact? She didn't know, and at this point, she didn't think she was brave enough to risk finding out.

She looked out the window, her eyes catching an approaching road sign.

It read: New Orleans 156mi

They were in the homestretch now, just as Klaus had said. Soon enough they'd be in New Orleans. She had a million unanswered questions, but she knew the answers were all waiting for her in the crescent city, in one form or another.

She found it ironic that she was seeking answers to the most difficult questions of her life in a city nicknamed The Big Easy.

The miles continued to roll by, grassland slowly giving way to swampy bayou country. Cami stared out the window and waited for the city to overtake them.

Klaus would have preferred to talk in order to pass the time. While under normal circumstances, that wouldn't have been the case, he enjoyed Cami's company, loved the way her mind worked and the way she tended to look at the world from a slightly different angle than everyone else. Good news for him, since she seemed to see something worthwhile in him that few, if any, had seen before. Something worth saving, perhaps.

There were moments when she looked at him like he was the answer to some soul-deep question she'd been seeking the answer to her whole life. Like that night he'd stayed with her…the night before he'd given her his daughter and begged her to keep the girl safe. That night, she'd looked at him with wide-open eyes that held no secrets, and as he'd looked back at her, he'd realized that those eyes offered as much as they took, revealed as much as they sought. She had been as bare to him in those moments as anyone had ever allowed themselves to be in his presence. She had shown him a level of trust that went beyond anything he'd ever known, and he had been profoundly changed. A thousand years on this dreadful earth, a thousand years of hedonistic affairs and sins of the flesh, and that one encounter had obliterated the memory of every one that had come before it.

And yet, there were moments when she looked at him as though he might suddenly rip out the hearts of her children and eat them in front of her, their blood dripping down his chin, staining the chest of the despicable beast he often thought himself to be.

He doubted she knew the pain that particular look inflicted on his already damaged psyche. He would be the first to admit he'd earned that look…that fear, but that didn't mean it made it any less difficult to endure coming from her. She'd trusted him before…not to hurt her, physically or emotionally, but with the way things stood now, he could see how things might have changed in her eyes.

He'd left her alone far longer than he'd promised, and in doing so, he'd allowed her to fall in love with a child that wasn't hers. He knew Camille had a boundless capacity for love, and it pained him greatly that he had allowed her heart, perhaps the thing he loved most about her, to cause her unfathomable grief. He had half a mind to take her and the children away with him…to just keep driving and never look back. He felt certain they could find some modicum of happiness together if they did, but he couldn't do that to Hope. She deserved to know Hayley. He had already robbed her of three years with her mother, though he had, in his opinion, given her the very best mother she could have had, in Hayley's absence, in the form of Camille.

But he also couldn't leave his siblings. A promise was a promise, and despite where things stood right now between himself and Elijah and Rebekah, the three of them had promised each other years ago…always and forever.

It was a vow that he had sworn never to break.

And so, despite the fact that going back to New Orleans might mean that Hope would someday grow closer to Hayley than to himself or Camille…and that Camille, the one person who'd ever found the good in him when there was no reason at all for her to search for it, might grow to resent him, hate him even, because of that fact…despite the fact that he might find out for sure what he already knew to be true, that there was no way Camille's child could be his…despite all those things, he would go back to New Orleans.

He would go back for his family, for his siblings and for his daughter…even if that meant losing everything.