CHAPTER 16: Clear the Room

Freya woke in darkness Everyone is fine. Take a breath Freya," Marcel's calm voice made it's way through her skull as she reluctantly sat back down on the bed.

"The Cyclops?" Freya muttered.

"Dead two days ago. Your old Norse gods would be proud of you. Probably the Hellenistic Pantheon as well. Your lightning plan worked pretty damn well, if improvised. It would seem that you're just a regular Thor." Caroline replied wryly from the window. "Everyone's alright. The girls have made themselves scarce for the most part, but they've all shown up at meal times, if sporadically and weirdly in pairs."

"Hey, uh, Emma? Freya's up." Marcel called through to the next room. The school's counsellor and resident medic, apparently, walked in with a smile.

"You're finally awake! Brilliant. Hope will be so pleased when she wakes up." Emma said as she took stock of her informal patient.

"You're the medic?" Freya asked, looking the new woman up and down. She was cute, and she decidedly had a good bedside manner. "Ever treat lightning strike victims before?"

"Nurse, sort of. We don't have an official one. And that's a no to lightning victims. But other than the superficial damage, which is unfortunately permanent from what I can tell, magic infused lightning's a bitch, everything else is working quite well," Emma responded in her crisp English accent. While she may be new to lightning strike victims, she didn't seem overly concerned, which made Freya feel a little better. That is, until all of Emma's words registered.

"Superficial damage? What?" Freya asked. Caroline quickly handed her a glass of water, noticing how raspy the other blonde sounded. It wasn't lost on Freya how visibly Caroline flinched. Marcel thought he concealed it, but he didn't. Emma on the other hand simply held out a mirror with trepidation.

Freya looked herself for a long time before saying anything. Her expressions morphed from horrified to melancholy by the time it took for Caroline to cross the room and pull the taller blonde into a hug. "You still look beautiful sweetie, and something tells me your wife won't be too upset. I gave you some of my blood while you were sleeping. It was a lot worse before. Like, you were hella burnt. The children would be calling you Zuko, or Todoroki? I forget which one?"

"What the fuck?" Freya asked, baffled by the direction this conversation had taken.

"Anime hotties my daughters won't shut up about. Be glad your daughter isn't a teenager yet. You've got a while before she abducts you and makes you watch her tv shows."

Freya let out an only slightly choked laugh as she hugged Caroline back. She was a teenage forever, and perhaps some of her mannerisms would stay her physical age. Secretly, Freya loved her fellow blonde's weirdness.

There weren't many people who felt comfortable discussing anime Freya, or calling her 'sweetie' (not even Keelin), let alone allowed to get away with it. But Caroline's relationship with the Mikaelson family was an odd one. After having looked after Hope for so long, and Klaus' badly hidden long-time romantic affections for the young blonde vampire, she was probably as close as any outsider was to being considered family. It was a welcome surprise when Caroline found herself treated with genuine kindness by first Hayley, and then the other women in the family. The men other than Klaus took a little while…but Freya assured her that was just because Klaus had made some pretty explicit threats if they flirted with her. All in all, being called sweetie by someone less than 40 years old was still a little weird though, especially when that person was frozen as a biological 18 year old.

"Should we try the whole 'let's have a nice conversation over dinner' thing again?" Marcel asked, hoping to distract Freya from the subtle pink Lichtenburg scars running down her face, down her neck, and presumably across her chest and ribs in an eerie spiral pattern all the way down to her foot, where the lightning excited. At least the facial scarring wasn't too bad….Keelin was going to murder her, and make her change their daughter's diapers until she grew out of them most likely. Freya silently nodded to herself with a pained expression as she accepted the most likely outcome of her conversation with Keelin.

"Uh Freya, are you alright?" Marcel spoke up as she had temporarily forgot that she was in the company of three people.

"Yeah, just mentally playing through the lecture I'm going to get from my wife," Freya muttered with a dusting of blush tingeing her cheeks. "It's not going to go my way."

"I'd hope not! Why did you get struck by a fucking lightning bolt anyway?" Caroline asked with her hands on her hips in an oddly matronly pose that looked hilarious on the eternal high-schooler. Not that anyone would dare tell her that.

"Freya's extra?" Marcel supplied, earning him a literal tendril slap of static electricity from Freya, much to the amusement of Emma, who was hanging back to watch the drama.

"Well that's a new trick, right?" Emma pointed out with raised eyebrows.

"As far as I know, Static Shock's powers were not in your arsenal the last time we saw each other," Caroline added.

"Hey!" Marcel smiled at the younger vampire. "Are you sure you are 'abducted' to watch these shows? You're just a ninety's' kid who can't help making out-dated pop-culture references aren't you?" the former King of New Orleans looked very smug. Freya had no idea what he was talking about, but Caroline's embarrassed blush at being caught out as a closet otaku was plain for all to see.

Luckily Caroline didn't have to justify her love for 2000's era anime/cartoon shows because Alaric walked through the door looking slightly worried.

"Hey, you alright there Mikaelson?" he asked in a way that sounded remarkably cordial for him.

"Just a little lightning," Freya replied haughtily to the eye-rolls of everyone else.

Alaric pinched the bridge of his nose and said to the room in general, "Have you seen the girls? I was thinking we ah…resume our discussion before we were so rudely interrupted by our local monster of the week."

"Speak of the Devil," Marcel muttered as Hope poked her head around the corner in a manner that was strangely shy for the usually confident young woman.

"We really don't do that here," Caroline said with a grimace at Marcel's phrasing.

"Huh?" he looked to Freya.

'It's a sensitive topic,' the witch responded telepathically. Marcel nodded, but refrained from sating his curiosity. Freya looked up at her niece, "Hey there kiddo, how've you been?" Hope's eyes had been marred by tears recently, that much was obvious.

"Better than you look right now," Hope shot back with little bite. Her hands were at her side; her left hand braced lightly against the door, and the right was hanging limply by her side.

"Really? 'Cause I'm not the one who's mascara is giving Niagara Falls a run for their money," Freya fired back with a soft smile. "If you want to talk alone, I can make all these other old people leave, I am the patient here after all," Freya joked, but Hope got the message: they'd leave her and her Auntie alone if she but asked for it.

"That's not how being a patient works," Emma muttered to herself. Of course most of the room heard it, being enhanced somehow, and rolled their eyes collectively at the nurse's foolish optimism that traditional roles would apply with a Mikaelson in the equation.

"I…I'd like that," Hope said. And just as Freya said, the others vacated the room. Both Marcel and Alaric gave her a reassuring pat on the back. Caroline gave her student and sort-of-adopted-daughter a hug at vampire speed before dragging a reluctant Emma from the room. Hope nearly stumbled at the hug, but seemed to catch herself with her superior reflexes even as she let out a squeak. "Sorry," Caroline said with a little embarrassment at her overzealousness, and then she was gone, and it was just the aunt and niece in the room.

Hope gestured behind her and the door swung shut leisurely, locked itself, and a privacy ward was erected, making the perimeter of the room glow briefly before returning to normal. "We're good," Hope said to Freya's confusion.

Her confusion didn't last long as Josie materialized at Hope's side, lifting her hand from the Mikaelson's arm. The Siphon's stream of magic broken the invisibility spell and brought her back into sight. Freya's lips quirked into a grin, "That's a clever trick. Good modification on that piece of magic there to fool not one, but four supernaturals and one of the most dangerous humans on the continent. So, to what do I owe the discretion of this audience? There must be a reason you don't want mommy and daddy to know you're talking to me. Fortunately, I'm a sucker for disobeying parental figures, so let's hear it. " Freya said wryly as she sat back on her bed comfortably with an almost arrogant air about her.

"Um.." Hope tried to start, but her courage flagged a bit. So Josie decided to speak up instead.

The brunette twin took a small breath before asking, "Mrs. Mikaelson? We were wondering if we could ask you some questions."