Don't It Just Break Your Heart || Haylijah

How to Save a Life

Hayley felt Greta's grip on her heart tighten. She looked past Greta and saw Hope lying, unconscious on the ground. She tried to gather any remaining strength she had left to fight back. She would not let this monster hurt her daughter.

Suddenly, the front door burst open and Hayley let out a sigh of relief. Klaus stood in the doorway for a moment, assessing the situation. His eyes flickered from where Hayley was pinned against the wall to the ground where his daughter was sprawled out.

Klaus stepped further into the house, revealing someone standing behind him.

"Elijah." Hayley gasped.

****

*One Week Earlier*

"Out of all of the places in the world I expected Elijah Mikaleson to end up in, this is not what I would have guessed." Marcel joked, studying the small town in France they had ended up in.

It had been a tense journey from New Orleans to France. Freya spent most of her time trying to continue a locator spell to track down Hayley, gaining some strange looks from the fellow passengers in first class. They met Klaus at the airport and finished the trip to Manosque together.

Klaus had attempted to convince Elijah to join their efforts in finding Hayley the night before, and it had ended less than spectacularly. So Klaus called in some reinforcements. Freya made sure Hope was safe at her boarding school before meeting Marcel in New Orleans to fly over together. If Elijah wasn't going to listen to reason, they would force him to.

"He spends his time at a piano bar up the road." Klaus pointed down a small alleyway, heading in that direction.

"No time to take in the sites?" Marcel followed after Klaus. He was on a mission.

Freya was worried about the confrontation that was about to take place. She knew Klaus had a lot of suppressed anger at their brother for erasing all of them without consulting them. Add on top of that the guilt he felt for Hayley's disappearance, Klaus was in a volatile state.

"Just remember the plan." She reminded both of them. "There's no reason this has to turn into some bloodbath. While all of you can't be killed, I am still very much mortal."

"Don't worry sister," Klaus smirked at her. "I won't hurt him. That much."

"Reassuring as always." Freya rolled her eyes. They just had to restrain him long enough for her to cast the spell and then Marcel can force his memories back on him. Once Elijah had his memories, he would move heaven and earth to find Hayley.

****

Elijah was still reeling from the last couple of days. A man named Klaus showed up claiming to be his brother and begging for his help tracking down some woman Elijah Mikaelson had loved. Elijah tried to feel some sympathy for their plight but he couldn't find it in himself. He knew of his past family and all of the evil they had inflicted on the world.

He was also still upset with Antoinette. They had met when he was Elijah Mikaelson and she lied to him. This was the woman he planned to marry and she had been keeping secrets. Elijah didn't know what to do with that. He loved her but he wasn't sure if he could trust her. Everyone seemed to have ulterior motives to want him in their lives.

Elijah's mind went to a pretty brunette he had met a few years back. He had felt a profound connection to her as soon as he saw her walk into the bar. The connection only grew as they spoke and danced. Part of him had wondered if this was someone he had known in his past life. But she hadn't said anything and her name wasn't one that he found in all of his research.

When Klaus mentioned Hayley, he wondered if that could be the same woman. Elijah secretly hoped it was not. That night had felt special to him. So special, he spent months making it up to Antoinette, not that he revealed to her what had transpired between himself and Andrea. Nothing had happened, and yet he felt guilty for the way Andrea had made him feel. And now he was questioning if it was all just a ploy. A way to manipulate him to come back to his family, to the co-dependency, to the toxic relationships they had relied on for over a thousand years.