11

Luck wasn't something Klaus believed in. If luck was real then the Mikaelsons didn't have much in way of it. They didn't have bad luck either, Klaus looked over their thousand years and found too many things that could have gone terribly wrong for them, so, no, they didn't have bad luck.

But he would have to revise his opinion because the fortunes were smiling down upon them.

A pretty little werewolf had just fallen into their laps, a Miss Hayley in town to avail the hotel, a damned sight better than the one in McKinley where she was visiting the Occult professor.

Luring her away was easy. Turning her into a hybrid, not so much and Klaus was reminded exactly why he didn't believe in luck.

He watched, angry beyond all counts as his first hybrid bled from her eyes and ears, writhing in pain until he reached for the late vestige of mercy left in him and snapped her neck.

He made his way to Greta who was began backing up quickly, sensing his bad mood. His hand fit around her neck perfectly and he lifted her off the ground.

"I thought the curse was broken," He gritted out. Greta sputtered, gasping for breath, her hands wrapped around his one, trying to break his hold. Only once a pallor began setting in did he let her go, he did need her alive to answer him, after all.

"We did everything right, the curse was broken," Greta choked out and Maddox continued her train of thought.

"Unless there's something about the curse you've left out." In the last few months things had changed, Klaus had been finding Greta's simpering annoying while Maddox's bluntness was more on par with what he was used to with his siblings. Klaus hadn't maintained the same associates for long in his life, certainly not human ones. It was an odd thing.

"Mother was creative," Elijah drawled, eyeing the dead failed hybrid dispassionately. "Perhaps the curse was more complicated than we first believed."

"Without knowing what the Original Witch did, we cannot undo it." Greta said, bruises darkening on her neck. "We need to find a way to contact her."

"There is another way," Elijah said as he undid his suit jacket button and bent at the knee, turning the dead girl's head this way and that to see the damage better. He rubbed the blood between his fingers before wiping them off on the girl's jacket and stood up.

"And what might that be?" Klaus asked, impatient but Elijah simply smirked doing up the button once more.

"We talk to the Original Witch's child of course, the one who was taught all about witchcraft from the Witch herself." Softly Klaus swore and Elijah must have heard them because he grinned, his first true grin in ages. "Let's go wake Rebekah, shall we?"

Eileen dithered in front of the office door. It was perfectly logical to do this, sometimes you just needed help. Eileen knew she needed help, she had for a long time but things hadn't settled down until now. Marlene was fine, Dad was going to be back home in a month, she had got the job as part of the corps de ballet for the American Ballet company like she wanted, everything was perfectly fine.

Except for Eileen herself.

With a sigh she pushed the door open and with an acknowledging nod, she sat down in the seat. The introductions were done, confirming all the things that had been said on the phone when she had made the appointment.

"So, Ms Henri," The man said her name the French way, most people didn't do that unless she had specifically said so. It was interesting and for a moment Eileen let herself be distracted by it. But she was there for a reason and she didn't want to waste her time, she had far too little of it to begin with. He made the small talk before segueing into asking her about her day.

It was all smoothly done. Perhaps others like her needed that prompting, needed to feel more at ease before diving into the thick of it. But Eileen had trained herself to be self-aware and didn't bother much with it.

"I've been a bit depressed in the last few months. It started because my sister was in a coma after a car accident but she's woken up and is fine now and I'm still depressed." Eileen thought over her words and continued, "I should also add that due to a head injury I don't remember the events of the last month or so at all and despite being in a better place now, I have been having a few panic attacks."

"Let's see if we can do something about that," The psychiatrist said and Eileen's eyes drifted behind him to the clock.

Forty minutes left in the session.

Damon tossed his duffle bag over his shoulder and strode out to his car. He turned one last time to look at it, the boarding house that had once been his home.

Elena hadn't been happy to hear that he was leaving although she also refused to tell him why. Typical though. What was it about the doppelganger that did that, what was it that made him excuse everything they did even when he didn't want to? First Katherine and now Elena.

Katherine…

Katherine was dead. Damon hadn't thought he would care as much as he did. But, Katherine was dead and all the anger, all the hate that he had just barely managed to conjure up for the woman, had died with her. For all that she had betrayed him countless times over, he had loved her far longer than he had hated her. And having to leave her corpse there in the forest in favour of taking Eileen's one back to the Boarding house had killed something in him. In that moment he had understood Katherine better than he ever had.

She had only ever wanted to live, whatever the cost for that life might have been but she had only really managed to survive right up until her final moment.

And he was all alone in mourning her. Elijah of all the people, might have been the only other person who did the same but he was grieving the human version of Katherine, he mourned the innocent human Katerina.

No one understood, no one bothered to. And this small town with its madness was beginning to wear on Damon.

It was getting awfully boring and it was off to the big cities again.

Maybe he would go to New York. Their little week there hadn't left him enough time to visit his old haunts.

Klaus flipped through his book as the sound of things clattering and people shouting continued behind him. It was some terrible youth adult vampire romance that had been in the purse of the woman he had drained on the way back from Chicago.

Terribly written with a ton of purple prose dedicated to describing the beauty of the vampire boy, Klaus had no idea why he was reading it. Well, alright, he was reading it in hopes that at some point the vampire would just tear into his mediocre little human pet and drain her dry.

With a sigh he shut it. It was too terrible to be borne.

A glass flew behind his head, parallel to the chaise lounge he was seated on, and shattered as it met the wall. With a few more shrieks it was all done and silence resumed.

Rebekah's temper tantrum was finally done with.

She had thrown a fit directed at him back when he'd woken her up in Chicago. Elijah had declined going with him , saying it was his responsibility since he was the one who had daggered her and so Klaus had been all alone when waking her up.

Which was Elijah's first mistake.

Because This was Rebekah and she could never stay mad at him for too long . Not when he told her about Mikael following them. Not when he told her of Stefan's penchant for Elena, vegetarianism and of course, his previous connection to KAterina. And she definitely couldn't stay mad at him once he told her of how he had been alone for the last few years as Elijah had believed him when he said that the others were dead. Because Rebekah knew that in his own twisted way, Klaus would always live by their vow.

Always and Forever.

Klaus looked up to find Rebekah sobbing in Elijah's arms. He rose to put his own arms around the two feeling content after a very long time.

New York was a big city. Damon knew this. He had been there before, many times, watched it grow into the metropolis that it was, sprawling up into the air as much as it did on the ground. Running into Eileen was a laughable idea, his usual watering holes no places where she would be.

And yet.

He found himself standing in front of the very same building with the practice rooms within where they had first explained the world of the supernatural to her. When she volunteered to die in Elena's place.

So it shouldn't have surprised him to find himself staring at her, small bag thrown over her shoulder, having broken away from the swarm of others dressed like her. A class must have just ended he realised.

"Elena's doctor friend, right?"

"Damon, Damon Salvatore."

Eileen nodded, silent, clearly waiting for him to say something more. It was just the kind of thing she would do, she wouldn't ask 'What are you doing here?' or 'Are you stalking me?', no she would just wait until the awkwardness came over him, wait for him to break.

Which he did, "I haven't been in the city since when we all came to stay with you. Habit, I guess."

Eileen's eyebrow rose. Damon could almost hear what she was thinking, 'One week of staying with me and already developing habits of hanging around my dance classes? Bit strange of you.'

The thing is, back when she still remembered knowing him, she would have just said it, not just thought it. She knew him, she was comfortable saying things like that to his face. This qualm wasn't the norm for them. She didn't remember him, but he remembered her.

"You're making this weirder than it is."

The other eyebrow flew up, joining its twin.

Damon sighed heavily, rolling his eyes which was when she reacted.

"Huh, I actually knew you. As an individual." He supposed something in the familiarity of his actions had convinced her that they were on close terms once. The utter disbelief in her voice though, it was more than a little bit insulting.

"Why is that so strange to you?"

"Because most of my phone messages and calls from the month in Mystic Falls are from someone saved as Klaus. Only a couple of outgoing calls to Damon and those weren't more than a few minutes."

A chill went down Damon's spine at that name and the fact that it was coming form Eileen. She shouldn't know anything about the hybrid and if she had tried to call back on the number and spoken to Klaus, Elena and everyone were in some serious danger.

"You didn't try to contact him did you?" He asked, wishing that she didn't have vervain around her neck so that he could compel her to tell the truth.

Eileen went blank and took a subtle step back. Some of his panic must have leaked into his voice. Damon was losing it, slowly but steadily.

"I haven't exactly eager to remember my Mystic Falls days. It hinders any plausible deniability I might have."

"Plausible deniability?" Damon asked, thoroughly confused.

"Oh, come on, are you really going to pretend like there isn't something shady going on in that town? I did a bit of research, the number of dead people alone is weird and I might have ended up being one of them!"

Ending up as one of the dead people was exactly what Eileen had wanted though. Damon was curious to know what she thought was going on in Mystic Falls, what picture she had drawn in her mind with the few pieces she had. Had she guessed upon the supernatural nature of the town? Had any of the texts from Klaus given anything away?

"What do you think is happening in Mystic Falls."

Eileen opened her mouth to answer, as if eager to share her theories but shut her mouth before a sound could make its way out, eyeing him carefully. With one eye on him, she shot out a text and Damon's better than human sight let him see what she was writing.

'Met elena's frnd, talking shady biz, if i go missing tell the cops to look for damon salvatore'

And Damon felt laughter bubbling up for the first time in months.

"Drug trafficking." She finally answered, succinct and utterly serious. "Don't know why verbena counts as a drug in Mystic Falls but I'm putting it down to small town weirdness. Maybe you don't get the good stuff there."

And Damon nearly fell over laughing.

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