You Don't Know What I'd Do For You (Love you like oxygen)

thirty-two

*A/N* Welcome back, everyone! Happy Kwanzaa to everyone celebrating as well as a belated merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah! I decided for this fluff chapter to be between Elijah and Hayley with some bonus baby Hope because I hate what the show did to those three, so we're gonna fix it. I'm not a Haylijah shipper so there won't be any of that side of their relationship in this chapter, I just see them as sort of family/friends so I tried to give it more of that feel. Trigger warning for this chapter is eating disorder (kinda, the vampire edition of it anyway, but it will still include described side effects of food restriction and an aversion to food). If you are safe to do so, please continue. Happy reading!

Hayley POV

Hope cooed and squirmed happily as I carried her through the compound. It was like she could tell that we were going to see Elijah, sense that we were getting closer with each staircase and winding hallway. She adored him, had since the day she was born, looked up at him like he had hung the moon and the stars all by hand just for her. And there were days where I wondered if he might have, days where he looked at her and held her like there was nothing in the world he wouldn't do for that little girl.

Sure, I had heard all the stories from witches, and werewolves, and vampires alike. I had read all the different versions of great battles won and lost among the Original family, heard all the names of 'the Beast', 'the Noble Martyr', and 'the Lost One', but it was different actually seeing it right in front of you. No amount of ancient, supernatural history could have prepared me for it, the thousands of renditions about Elijah could never do him justice. They couldn't possibly describe the way that he still managed to find the best light in all the worst people, or how he would pull himself together and smile as he gave out a millionth second chance. No witch memoir could have ever told of the way you could watch his aching soul ease its heavy weight as he watched his broken family be happy. They could never explain how the whole world could have been ending and we could know that he wouldn't regret spending it with us on the couch.

Nothing had prepared me, nobody had warned me, and it had torn me apart.

There was just something indescribably devastating about knowing Elijah, about seeing the hopelessness in his forever. Sometimes, I would catch fleeting glimpses of how impossibly heavy the burden really was, a brief flood before the walls were slammed back into place. It was incomprehensible, a thousand years, having all of those lifetimes but never getting to truly live them. Thinking of how unfair that was sent a pang through my core, to be stuck hanging in the balance as the world spun around without you.

The ancient werewolf texts told of vampires being abominations, mutated and distorted until they were so far removed from the natural world that life and death alike abandoned them. But it was hard to see it that way with Elijah, to remember what lurked underneath. He didn't look like a monster, he looked lost, like in all those lifet, mes he had never had a safe home. And he looked tired, like he had never gotten a chance to be young. But I think most of all he just looked... faded in a way, like you could look right through him and see all that had been diminished and beaten down, all that had been taken, all the missing pieces. It reminded me of something one of the witches had told me, a ghost in the world of the living is one of the loneliest existences there is. You could see it in his eyes, if you looked closely, the emptiness inside, the holes in his life reserved for those that were too far gone to fill them. It was as if someone had come and carved out parts of him, and he had let them. All the parts that had made him smile and laugh, that had allowed him to be relaxed and carefree. If you knew what to look for, you could almost just sit back and watch as he stared down the most powerful creatures in the world while still trying not to take up too much space, not be too loud.

~~~~~

The sound of my knocking on his bedroom door felt like it echoed loud through the whole compound. I was tense as I waited, swaying gently from side to side in an attempt to both calm my nerves and keep Hope entertained. A screaming baby wouldn't make this any easier. I heard the quiet shuffle of feet from within and held my breath as Elijah swung the door open, silently preparing myself to be turned away. "Hayley," he greeted, smiling softly as he held the door open wider, "please feel free to come in."