A/N: So this idea came to me after the finale, this picks up a few months after Klaus and Hayley give Hope away to Rebekah to protect her. I should note that in this story the things that have transpired between Hayley and Elijah on the show are canon, but this is most def a Klayley story and there won't be a real triangle between the 'll just have to keep reading to find out more about that :) I'm really inspired to write this and I hope you guys like where I take this,oh and much like my other story, this will have LOTS of angst, sorry I'm just a sucker for those kinda feels haha REVIEW PLEASE!
Klaus wandered around the dark alleys of the quarter alone, trying to block out the images and thoughts that had been tormenting him. It was one of the first times In months he'd actually decided to take his drinking public, choosing instead to use his home as a fortress against the miserable city that had taken everything away from him. The air smelled like her, the cityscape reminded him of her, and the moon made him yearn for her, his daughter, his Hope.
He, along with his brother and Hayley, had stayed isolated for over 5 months after he tearfully gave Hope away to Rebekah. Part of it was for show, to make sure everyone believed that he and Hayley were really grieving parents, but part of it was real, often times too real, because although she wasn't dead they still lost her, she was still gone. That was his reality and there was no escaping it so he let his grief consume him. For months he holed up in his quarters unwilling to hold an entire conversation with neither Hayley nor Elijah. Marcel would visit occasionally to check on him and Hayley but he never stayed long, Klaus would always find some kind of way to get him to leave him alone in his sorrow. Elijah tried to get him to come out of his depression as well but it never worked and he focused most of his attentions on Hayley, who had no desire to be around him anyway.
She was worse off than he was. He knew that if there was anyone in the world who felt this hurt more deeply than he did it was Hayley. She had not only been forced to give her child up but she had died just before her daughter was ripped from her arms and had come back to life as an entirely different species. There were several occasions where he wanted to go to her, to share in their grief, to help her cope with some of the changes and feelings she might be experiencing but he couldn't bring himself to do it because as much as the city reminded him of Hope, there was nothing that reminded him of what he lost more than Hayley. When he saw her face he saw Hope's, her hair, her nose, her cheekbones, her smile. Everything about Hayley reminded him of her so his only escape was to avoid her as much as possible. Besides, Elijah smothered her with affection and kept a watchful eye on her so it wasn't like she really needed him, or so he thought.
She was the reason he had finally decided to leave his fortress; escape would probably be a better word to describe what he was currently doing. She had been spiraling out of control the last few weeks. Her sadness started to manifest itself in fits of rage and several emotional breakdowns. They found out she had gone out and viciously fed on and killed a group of tourists after she found out one of them was a witch. The girl was innocent but Hayley couldn't stop herself. That was only the beginning of her destructive behavior. Her blood thirst threatened to control her and if they didn't stop her she wouldn't be able to live with herself later on and there was nothing Elijah could do about it no matter how hard he tried. When it first started Klaus tried to stay out of it, to let her deal with her grief and her issues on her own like he had done time and time again but the more he saw her loose it the more he knew he couldn't just stand idly by while she deteriorates.
Elijah was there every step of the way of course, trying and failing at tending to her every need. He knew why Elijah couldn't get through to her no matter how hard he pushed; it was the same reason he could never get through to him. He treated her like she was broken and needed to be fixed, not like someone who needed to tackle her demons head on and try to cope with them. Like to solve her problems she just needed to revert back to the old her, not realizing that the old Hayley, much like the old Klaus, was gone and would never return.
Klaus knew that if he let her slip into that deep abyss of darkness she would never return, he would loose the mother of his child and that wasn't a loss he could bear, especially since the only thing keeping him from completely loosing it like her was the hope that they might be able to have the life they thought they would have one day. Sure he and Hayley might not be a couple, she might have feelings for his brother, but she was his family and he cared about her deeply, sometimes more that he even realized or liked to admit. They were supposed to be a family, an untraditional and extremely complicated family, but a family nonetheless, and even if that dream was shattered into 1000 pieces the moment they gave Hope away he still had a slither of hope that those pieces could one day be put back together. That's why he finally decided he needed to help her, he needed to at least try even if helping her brought him even more grief it was still something he needed to do, he could find his way out of his darkness, but she couldn't at least not on her own and he owed it to his daughter to make sure she had at least one parent who wasn't completely consumed by their demons.
He tried a simple approach at first, trying to just talk to her here and there, make her see that she didn't need to go down this path but he wasn't good in situations like that since he had a hard time of even convincing himself to not self destruct so she usually just pushed him away. Tonight he had tried to go to her again to just talk. He went searching for her in her room after hearing her scream loudly and toss something at a wall but he didn't find her there. For a minute he thought that she had gone out and was currently sucking some poor soul dry until he heard her faint whimpers coming from behind the cracked door connected to her room. He couldn't comprehend why she would even want to think about that room let alone go in it; he hadn't been able to bring himself to look at the nursery since that night. He contemplated just going back to his room like he was never there but her cries kept ringing in his ears leaving him unable to turn around to make a quick exit. Instead he slowly walked to the door and pushed it open. The sight he saw when it finally opened made tears immediately come to his eyes and his heart sink to his knees. She was sitting in the rocking chair holding a blanket and rocking as if she was holding their child. Tears streaked down her face and she rocked back and forth and back and forth letting the heartbreak tear her apart inside. Just seeing the room tore him apart but seeing her so broken, so lost, left him speechless and unable to feel anything except deep sorrow.
A tear slipped down his face as he finally found the courage to ask her what she was doing. She didn't respond immediately, only looked up at him and stared. There was emptiness behind her eyes, her humanity had already been slipping away but now it appeared her sanity was as well. Only a person with a lapse in sanity would subject herself to the heartache she was currently subjecting her self to. He couldn't understand it, he asked her why she was doing this, why she was abusing herself with the scent of their daughter and the images of the life they were supposed to have. She didn't respond to that either, she only cried as she buried her face in her lap while clutching the blanket. He thought about reaching out to her but he feared the close proximity would only render him into the same state that she was in. Instead he softly told her she needed to stop this, she needed to stop doing this to herself. His words must have infuriated her and made her snap because the next thing he knew she was speeding towards him and pushing him against a wall in her room and screaming at him. He stood there shocked at first, caught completely off guard by her physical outburst. His reflexes eventually kicked in after the initial shock wore off and he pinned her against the opposite wall, holding her arms down as she fought against his grip so she could hit him. She was screaming and crying and fighting and it was the saddest thing he had ever seen in his life.
He wasn't even angry with her; he only felt sadness, extreme sadness. He tried to quiet her, to tell her to calm down and stop her madness but it all fell on deaf ears and she kept screaming and fighting. He was trying to be gentle with the little wolf but she was uncontrollable. Her new strength and speed caught him off guard and he was forced to use a little more force than he wanted to in order to get stop her attack, though that still didn't get her to calm down. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he realized the only solution to her current bout of madness, he had to compel her. He whispered that he didn't want to do this but she was leaving him no choice just before he looked into her eyes and told her that she would calm down and allow herself to get some rest. He wanted to compel her to forget about her grief all together but he would never forgive himself for robbing her of her own free will to work through her problems no matter how much she needed it. It wasn't much and she would probably be back at it again in a short while but it would have to do for now.
After he compelled her she just stood there calmly in a daze, her breathing was heavy and accelerated and she seemed to barely even know where she was or what she had been doing. He gently picked her up and put her in her bed where she laid down silently staring at the wall. He wanted to stay with her through the night but he could feel his own sanity start to slip and he needed to get away before he spiraled out of control himself, so he bent down and gently brushed her face whispering everything would be okay and left her room. He also left the house seeking refuge in a nearby bar so he could drown out the pain with his favorite companion. He felt completely useless and helpless. He couldn't see his daughter, he couldn't help her mother, and he could barely control his own urges, the only time he's ever felt more powerless was when he was drained of his power by the witches and forced to watch Hayley give birth in agony and be killed.
That's what brought him to where he currently was, stumbling through the streets searching for some semblance of peace he knew he wouldn't find. He was contemplating going home but he feared what he would find when he got there. He didn't think he could handle seeing Hayley a wreck like that again but part of him felt the urge to return to her. As he continued walking he couldn't shake the feeling that he needed to be with her, he needed to talk to her, he need to just be near her. Maybe it was because he could feel himself slowly loosing it and he knew she was already lost so maybe they just needed to be lost together, maybe that's how he could help her, they do say the misery loves company.
No one could understand the feeling he was feeling like she could anyway, they were the only two people in the world who could ever possibly understand and he felt like he needed that comfort right now and that she desperately needed it too. The bottle of scotch he consumed had been his companion for the last three hours but it had done nothing but numb pain, not make him forget it completely and it was just begging to all come bursting out of him at any moment. He knew being around Hayley wouldn't make it go away but maybe it could soothe it and even if it didn't at least neither one of them would have to slip into the abyss alone. After wandering around for a little while longer he had found a helpless stranger and fed on him, releasing some of his pent up anger but still doing nothing to soothe his pain. That's when he finally found the resolve to return to her. He slowly made his way back to the compound, ready to finally face the grief and pain that had been eating away at them both for months.
When he arrived back at the compound it was eerily quiet. If he didn't know any better he would think that no one was home but him. He made his way up the stairs and paused just outside Hayley's door. For a second he thought about turning around and just going to his room but the sound of her tears gave him the extra push he needed to enter. When he walked in he found her sitting in her room in the dark. She was sitting in the middle of her bed holding the same blanket he found her with earlier just staring into nothing, the sight was jarring to say the least. He wasn't quite sure of what to say to her, of what she needed to hear to snap out of her state of depression so he just stood there in silence for a few moments. He slowly walked to her bed and sat down next to her, carefully removing the blanket from her tight grip. She didn't even flinch.
"Hayley..." He was met with silence as he expected. "Why won't you say anything love?" He moved a little closer to her and brushed her hair from her face, finally breaking her from her trance. She still didn't respond though, she only stared at him. He stared into her eyes reading the sorrow behind them. He knew why she couldn't say anything; she didn't really have to give him an answer, it was simple, she missed their daughter.
"You know I miss her too Hayley, I miss her everyday." He whispered, never breaking their eye contact. "Hope was everything to me as well, but we had to do what was best for her, I wish we could see that, then maybe we wouldn't beat ourselves up about it so much. We had no other choice" He said, voice starting to crack as he tried to convince himself of his own words. Silence once again filled the room, the weight of their shared pain was suffocating and it was becoming to be too much for Klaus to handle. He started to get up and leave but the sound of Hayley's voice made him freeze where he sat.
"I don't just miss her...I feel her, I feel her presence everywhere I turn. I can sense her, but I can't see her, or touch her, or smell her. I can't do anything but hold on to the few memories of her that I have, I can't do anything but imagine the time I rocked her in that rocking chair or swaddled her up in this blanket. That's all I have, those brief memories when I was supposed to have more." Tears had started to stream down her face again as she stared back at Klaus. "What am I supposed to do when my daughter is out there and I can't be with her…It wasn't supposed to be like this…"
"I know it wasn't, but it was for the best Hayley."
His words struck a nerve in her, that's all she's heard for months from Elijah, it was for the best; it was the right thing to do. It was true but it was in no way comforting and if anyone would know that it was Klaus.
"No don't tell me it was for the best!" She yelled as she stood up from her seated position on the bed. "You know that doesn't make a difference, knowing it was for the best doesn't make the pain go away, so don't sit here and pretend that's going to make me feel better because it doesn't, you know it doesn't!"
"What else am I supposed to say then Hayley, what do you want me to do, dwelling on it won't bring her back to us."
"You're supposed to not pretend, not act like everything is okay because it was the right thing to do, you're supposed to act like she mattered to you, like you miss her and there is nothing anyone can say or do to make that feeling go away."
"You think I don't miss her as well Hayley? You think I don't think about the how we were supposed to raise her together here, in this home, in this city. Images of her in the nursery that I built flood my thoughts every single day Hayley, some days I can't get it out of my head and it drives me borderline insane."
"Then why are you here? Why are you trying to fix me when you know the reasons behind my madness? Of course I never expected Elijah to understand, I didn't expect anyone to understand, but you…I thought you would get it and leave me alone."
"Oh I understand all too well love and that's exactly why I'm here. If you keep this up Hayley when our daughter returns to us her mother will be a shell of her former self. She will never know you as you were, only as what you have become and trust me that is not a weight you want to have to carry."
Hayley paused to take in his words. He did have a point and she would be a fool to not realize that she was dangerously close to reaching the point of no return but this wasn't something she could control, it wasn't voluntary, none of it was, not her turning, giving up her daughter, or completely loosing it.
"I can't control it Klaus…I…I try, I try to be at peace with it but my heart and my mind won't let me." Her voice was shaking again and nervously crossed her arms across her body. "I died, I died and my daughter was ripped from my arms and she was taken, I thought that was the last time I would ever see her, only it wasn't. I woke up alone in a church craving blood, her blood. How do you just move on from something like that? Am I supposed to just forget? Do you have any idea what that was like?"
"Of course I do! You talk to me as if I know nothing of your pain, as If I know nothing of what you've gone through or how you might feel. I watched you; I saw it all and I was powerless to do anything about it! You think I don't know what it's like to die ad wake up as something completely different? How do you think I felt after I was killed by my own parents and woke up as this, this abomination against nature? I know all too well how enticing this darkness is, I still have to fight it myself."
"Then stop treating me like I'm sick, like I'm broken. I don't need your pity, I don't need your comfort, I don't need any of it!"
"Then tell me Hayley, what is it that you need? It's been almost 6 months. How much longer are we supposed to continue on like this?"
"I NEED HER!" she screamed. No matter how much he wanted to plead with her, no matter what anyone said, there was nothing that could soothe her besides their daughter and he knew it.
"SHE'S GONE HAYLEY!" Klaus yelled as he started to come undone finally. His voice cracked and tears welled up in his eyes as he said it out loud for the first time. "She's gone and we didn't have anytime with her, we barely even got to hold her and I don't know when she's coming back. The vision of our family haunts me day in and day out. It makes me want to go out and destroy this entire city, everyone who has ever wronged you or I. Destroy the people who are the reason that we can't be with her."
Hayley was taken back by his sudden outburst. He had kept his cool the entire time she went on her tirade but now his control was slipping and it only made her want to loose control even more. "That's what I want to do too. I want to make everyone pay, any witch, any vampire, even if I have to take out my own family, I want their blood to fill the streets because they've robbed me of my one chance at happiness, they took her away from me!"
"But don't you see Hayley, you can't do that"
"WHY THE HELL NOT! You can go on rampages for centuries for no reason but I can't be angry that I can't be with my daughter, I can't want to give in to these impulses?"
"BECAUSE THERE'S ONLY ONE PERSON TO BLAME HERE…ME!" He yelled as the tears finally started to stream down his cheeks. "I'm the one who robbed you of our child, I'm the reason she will never be able to have a normal life, the reason she most likely never be safe. So if you want to destroy anyone then that person would be me." No matter how many times he wanted to kill any and everyone involved, get rid of every threat immediately, it still wouldn't make the pain of his own culpability in the matter go away. This was all his fault and it ate away at him constantly. Hayley's death, their child's attempted murder, having to give her up, Hayley's brokenness and slip into madness, everything, he was to blame for everything. "This is all my fault, I've made enemies my entire miserable life Hayley, my own mother tried to kill my child simply because I exist. There is no one more to blame here than I."
Hayley gasped as she watched Klaus breakdown in front of her. She had never seen him in such a state. Not even when he was completely powerless did he seem this weak. Hayley fought back her own tears as she walked over to the other side of the bed and moved closer to him. "Klaus…."
"How am I supposed to live with myself knowing that you're like this and I'm the cause of all of it all? I've robbed our daughter of her safety, of her home, I can not also rob her of her mother."
"You think I don't blame myself too? Think maybe if I had made a different decision here or there or not trusted this person or done anything differently I wouldn't have to feel this way. I blame myself for not thinking ahead, for not being smarter. I was so stupid Klaus! I was a naïve thinking I could do whatever I wanted to it wouldn't affect her, thinking I could have my family and my daughter and this perfect life here, thinking I could actually mean something to someone and do something worthwhile. It was never in the cards for people like you and me, we don't get happy 'endings no matter how hard we try and that makes it hurt even more...because she doesn't deserve this. We didn't deserve her in the first place." She sat on the bed and sobbed. Holding her face in her hands. Klaus reached out to her and placed her head on his shoulder. She didn't fight him, she only continued sobbing against his chest as he wrapped one arm around her and used the other to gently stroke her hair.
"I know we didn't deserve her, especially not I. We were both naïve and now look at us, maybe it's best if we let her go, sometimes I think she's better off without me anyway."
"But I can't Klaus….I can't let her go." She whispered in between sobs.
"I know, I can't let her go either." He replied, allowing his tears to fall down and wet her hair.
"So what are we supposed to do?" she asked, finally looking up at him. He whipped her tear-stained cheeks with his hand and let out a deep sigh. "I don't know…maybe we're destined to this life of misery."
Hayley nuzzled her head against Klaus chest and closed her eyes. "Thank you"
"For what? I haven't helped at all, if anything I've made things worse"
"For not having the answers, for not making me feel crazy or broken or alone."
Klaus let out a light chuckle, no one had ever thanked him for being clueless, and in a way he probably should be thanking Hayley since for the first time since they gave Hope away to Rebekah he felt slightly comforted. He didn't thank her though, he only sat in silence and let her continue crying into his chest, she needed to get it all out, they both did. Locking it all up would only cause her to continue to slip into madness.
She stayed that way for hours. There were no words exchanged between them the entire time, only grief. When her tears started to overwhelm him again he didn't run away like he would have before, instead he stayed with her and let it overtake him, he joined her in that low dark place and for the first time ever they mourned the loss of their daughter together.