FROZEN HEART • elijah mikaelson

3 | MAKE HER SWOON

CHAPTER THREE : make her swoon

Klaus was busy giving Emerita a tour of the Compound, talking and catching up over what they've missed over the past Millenia. It would certainly take more than a few hours or even a day, but they had to begin somewhere. Emerita, who's life wasn't nearly as busy or as threatened as the Mikaelson's was, merely nodded long as Klaus told her the tales of the havok he wreaked and how he very nearly came to the brink of being killed by his own father in Mystic Falls.

Emerita pulled a face at the name of the town. "For the life of me, Niklaus, I can not comprehend what is so interesting about that town that you'd go back there."

"I already told you," Klaus' tone was long suffering. "I needed to break my curse and then I needed the doppelganger's blood to build an army."

Emerita raised a brow, "And how exactly did that plan work out for you?"

"There may have been room for improvement." The Hybrid admitted in a grumble.

"May have?" She repeated, clearly incredulous. "You got desicated, you nearly got killed, your doppelganger was turned into a vampire, all of your Hybrids were killed and you now live in New Orleans, father to a baby I have yet to meet and on the outs with your brother." 

"Yes, yes, rub my nose in my failures, that's what a good sister-in-law should do." Klaus gave her a glare that didn't really have any heat in it.

Emerita opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. She thought for a while before saying, "You know, I want to argue against that statement, but it is unfortunately completely true."

"Do you really still hate him after all this time?" Klaus was curious about the answer. Whenever he breached the subject of her and Elijah, she would change the subject nearly immediately. But the Hybrid was nothing if not persistent.

Emerita sighed, knowing that Klaus was asking out of both concern and curiosity. "Nik, you and I both know, I've never hated that man a day in my life."

Klaus pounced on that information. "Then why don't you forgive him?"

"I don't know how." She admitted, chest constricting painfully as the longing of a millenia, for her husband, ripped through her heart. "I've thought about him every day over the last thousand years, for a time I was so angry at him. After a while, the anger faded and all that was left was hurt. Hurt because he went against my choice, because he made me into a vampire. I didn't want this, and he forced it onto me."

"He loved you, still does, and didn't want to live eternity without you." The Hybrid tried to reason with her, wanting her to understand why Elijah forced her to change.

"That plan worked out for him about as well as your Hybrid-army plan did for you." Emerita shot back, voice tinged with bitterness that spoke of a score left unsettled.

"You know, I'm not the only one who's changed." Klaus told her matter-of-factly.

Emerita didn't even try to deny it. "I had to survive all on my own, Nik. Being indestructible made sure I stayed alive, but it didn't help me live. I haven't lived properly in all the time I was on my own."

Klaus dropped the subject for now, not wanting to chase her away when she barely arrived. "So, this is the room I had set up for you."