❝I thought they were just bones.❞
❝If you truly believed that, you would have let her rest.❞
They could bury her bones, but they couldn't bury the truth.
For 90 years, Klaus Mikaelson has been haunted by the memory of the woman he betrayed.
For...
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New Orleans, 1922
In the years since the death of his mother, Marcel Gerard had lingered in the city she had built.
It was an Eden meant to protect and sustain him, a home for the family that had since abandoned those streets and the orphan boy they had taken in. It was no longer the same city, nor was he the same man. He was harder now, the city was colder, but he was determined his mother's dream for New Orleans wouldn't die with her. The city had burned that night in 1919, the night she had given all to save them - those people of New Orleans that had thrown her to the devil, the family that had fled rather than stand and fight with her.
They hadn't even buried her.
New Orleans, still reeling in the ashes, had turned its eyes away when Father MacKenzie alone had laid Rowan Blackfyre to rest. To his deepest shame, Marcel hadn't been there either; too afraid of who may be watching, who could discover his escape from the death that seemed to have taken him in the Opera House.
Rowan Blackfyre was interred in Lafayette Cemetery a total of 13 hours before her body disappeared.
All Marcel had left of his mother was a name etched on an empty mausoleum. He wasn't sure why he had come to visit her now. He knew she wasn't there, not really, but he had nowhere else to go to be close to her again.
"I brought you some tulips." He whispered, placing them in the small vase by her name. "I had to buy 'em... I'm afraid your garden is a little worse for wear since you've been away. I never had the green thumb you did..." He choked, sitting in silence for a moment. "It's been twenty-six days since I was here last. I'm not sure if you've been keeping count. I have. I'm a bad son, I know. I'm sorry I haven't been round to see you more often, I've been trying to get the Factions to agree to sit down together and work out a plan for us all to co-exist, just like you wanted. To live...", a tear rolled down his cheek, "peacefully."
"That's all you ever wanted - peace. I hope you have it now. I hope there's something better after this, some place good. Maybe there's another world where you have a better son, one who can keep your flowers alive and comes to see you more often... one who doesn't let you die... I'm so sorry, Ma." He put his fingers to the stone, tracing the lines of her name, whispering a thousand apologies she would never hear nor ever understand.
What Rowan had heard in the years since her death was the cry of her child, her only son, reaching out across a bridge she could not cross until some flume had dragged her kicking and screaming back to the shores of life. Back to her home. Back to her family. She'd crossed an ocean, their names on the tip of her once-dead tongue.
"Marcel." She spoke, a strained croak. His head lifted, refusing to turn around but daring to believe. "Baby..."
His eyes brimmed as he turned to face her, and he felt himself fall apart as he crashed to his knees and she dropped to embrace him, Marcel clutching onto her like safety in a storm, Rowan tenderly wiping his tears.
"How are you here?" He composed himself. "I tried everything, they told me there was no way -"
"All that matters is I'm here now." She shushed him, running a hand over his cheek. "Now tell me: where is Killian? I've been reaching out and I can't find feel him." Her hand went to the gold chain at her wrist, one of an identical pair.
Marcel's face fell. "No one has seen him since the night you..."
Rowan shook her head. "He's not dead. He can't be. I'd feel it." Marcel eyed her for the first time, taking in the broken, dirt covered nails, the alert look in her eyes, the tension in her shoulders.
"Rowan... Where did you come from?" He breathed.
"He has to be hiding somewhere. He's gone underground until the coast is clear then he'll be back."
"Rowan, it's been almost three years." She froze in his arms.
"Three... Three years?" She questioned, and he nodded. "That's longer than the plan. He should have circled back by now."
"Last I saw him, Mikael was after him. I woke up after that and everything was burning. Everyone was gone. Including you."
"No." She refused, and he pulled her closer. "No, he's not gone. He can't be gone. My brother is not dead." Marcel consoled her as they mourned their lost years and grief enveloped their embrace.
"They're going to suffer for this." She promised him. "For all they've taken from us." Rowan held the last of her family tight, her body finally back in New Orleans, and her spirit torn apart, its sharp fragments turned on the world as a weapon.
