“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you and Aunt Davina decided to stay here,” Hope said after Marcel had walked her over to where Kol was working at a bar. “And I guess I also shouldn’t be surprised that you work in a seedy bar.” Hope added with a typical Mikaelson smile.
Everything about Atlantis was strange. Seeing Marcel and him not knowing so much, not knowing about what happened, or why Hope was such a loner, not knowing the pain she carried. She managed to not tell him, but it was really hard.
“So, are you going to break the rules and give your favorite, only, niece a drink?”
Kol had noticed the network blowing up with all of the new arrivals. Unusual arrivals that hadn’t been announced through their devices like normal. This had happened once before right around the time he’d arrived in Atlantis a year ago, but that had been the influx of kids from various futures. This wasn’t only that. He was cleaning a few glasses between customers when he heard a voice and looked up to see a young woman. She looked familiar in a way that he knew he should recognize, but it was her voice that made everything fall into place. Looking at her more closely, Kol grinned. He knew exactly who she was.
Stepping out from behind the bar, Kol walked over to her and looked her all over, taking in the changes he’d missed. He had no idea how many years had passed for her, years that she had to have spent without any of the Mikaelsons other than his eldest sister. He would have been worried about being close to her, but there hadn’t been any negative impacts when Rebekah had been here. Of course, he didn’t yet know that his brother had destroyed the Hollow by destroying himself.
“Look at you,” He said, still grinning wide. “Every time I see you, you sprout up.” He pulled her into a hug and closed his eyes. He’d been without any of his blood family for months, and he missed some of the more than he’d ever admit to anyone out loud. After he pulled back, he remembered her quip about the bar and looked around. “I try to bring a bit of class to the establishment, but there’s only so much even someone like me can do.” He looked her over again. “What on earth are you doing here, love? You’re alright, yes?”
Hope laughed giving Kol a big hug. Even if Kol was kind of the black sheep of the family, he was one of Hope’s favorite uncles. He got things that some of her other family didn’t get. Even though she hadn’t been able to be in the same room as most of her family for years, some of them she actually talked to on the phone and facetime.
“So, I guess that means I was how old when you last saw me?” Marcel had filled her in on the different times people came from, she hated that, not being able to say what happened, or how much seeing family right now after everything meant to her.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here, one minute I was walking down the hallway at school and the next thing I knew I was in a room with a lot of confused people being told I walked into Atlantis and there were people here that I know.” There was a little more to it but she decided not to share that part.
“Seven,” he replied. “The last I saw you was shortly before we separated the Hollow into pieces and parted ways. I was on my way to San Francisco to meet Davina when I was pulled here. Thankfully, she didn’t turn me into a toad or murder me for a lot of the coming and going I seemed to have done as previous versions of myself here.” Kol still didn’t know how that worked, but it didn’t matter now. He wasn’t going anywhere. “How old are you now? It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen you, it seems.”
He slung a casual arm around her shoulders and walked them both over to the bar. Looking at her, he knew without a doubt that she wasn’t of age even in Atlantis, but who really cared. Plus, it was early and the place was nearly empty, Abe hadn’t gotten into work yet, and neither of her parents were here to tell him he was a bad influence.. “What does my favorite niece like to drink?” He asked her with a grin.
“Wait, so you’ve been here before?” Hope caught that part but was really kind of confused by the concept of it. “And honestly, Aunt Davina loves you no matter what stupid thing you do.” She added with a small eye roll. “I’m 17 now.” That also confirmed that Kol had no idea about the future or the fate of two of his brothers, or… well he had a lot he didn’t know about.
She smiled though and leaned in just a little bit. It felt like it’d been forever since she got a hug from family. It was partly her fault but it still had a good feeling. “Um, let’s go with a Whiskey Sour?”
“Two or three times, I think, according to some of the others. I’m not sure how it works, but I don’t remember being here those other times. As far as this time, I’ve been here right around a year.” He nodded with a smile at Davina loving him and putting up with his antics. He’d been on good behavior for a while now, but that hadn’t always been the case. He also couldn’t believe that he’d missed ten years of Hope’s life.
As he prepared her drink, he poured one of his own and then joined her on the other side of the bar on the stools. “Tell me what I’ve missed. Ten years is a long time even for those of us who are immortal.”
“I’m surprised Davina didn’t so something worse than just turn you into a toad.” Okay, so, Hope knew that Davina wouldn’t really do anything to hurt Kol but she could see her being really angry about the fact that Kol was in and out of her life that many times, especially after everything they’d been through.
“Well, a lot, actually, but I’m going to guess you’re more curious about the Hollow than anything else to start with right?” She guessed. “It’s gone.” She was matter of fact about it, her tone masking the pain she felt when she thought about what her father had done. “How much do you really want to know?”
Yes, Kol was curious about the Hollow, but he hadn’t expected Hope to confirm that it was gone. He had no idea how it was possible given that the only known possible solution had been to separate it into the four Mikaelsons in the first place. Freya hadn’t been able to find another way to destroy it over the years.
He hesitated, but nodded anyway. “I’d like to know. Freya found a solution or a spell to contain her somehow?” He never would have suspected what had really happened or that his brother had channeled the energy into himself. “But I’d like to know about you, too. As much as you’d like to share. I swear I won’t go telling your mum and dad any secrets,” he said and held up two fingers for Scout’s honor.
Hope looked down trying to hide the pain she felt heating him say he wouldn’t tell her parents. “Well, it’d be kind of hard to tell them anything unless they both show up here, they’re both dead.” Looking back up she swallowed before talking quickly to try and stop Kol from having a chance to react. “Dad killed himself, everyone was miserable, and Freya helped me, and I took the hollow back, but it was killing me, I mean, it didn’t take me over like before but it was killing me, so he decided to take it into himself and well, he killed himself to protect me.” She didn’t mention Elijah or how her Mom died.
“So, is that drink ready?”
Every ounce of humor and amusement deflated out of Kol the moment he heard Hope say that her parents were dead. He listened to her say that Niklaus had killed himself in order to save his daughter. As much as Kol often hated his brother and generally had no desire to see him again, he could see the pain in his niece’s eyes and in her voice. He never would have wanted this life for her.
Kol slid the fresh drink over to her. He hadn’t spoken yet and glanced away as he processed what she was telling him. She hadn’t mentioned how Hayley was killed, and he didn’t ask. Given that there was nothing he could do about it, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know, at least not in that moment.
“How long?” He asked finally. “How long has it been?”
Hope looked down at the drink, she was well aware that she was probably underage here too but somehow that didn’t seem to matter when you were supernatural. She took a sip nodding to say it was good trying to get to the point where she could say the words.
“Two years,” she answered slowly unsure if she should say anything else. “I’m okay though, I’m at school, and I’ll be fine.”
“Two years,” he repeated. Two years his brother had been dead, and Kol hadn’t even known about it. He was quiet for a moment, but sighed and took the drink he’d poured for himself, raising it in the air as a toast to no one in particular except to the memory of the mighty Niklaus Mikaelson. Kol had never felt the kinship with his siblings, the always and forever, that Rebecca, Elijah, and Klaus had. He’d even hated and plotted against him on more than one occasion, but the idea that he was actually dead was hard to swallow. “Niklaus was a selfish bastard, but not when it came to you. I know that he loved you.”
He finished off the drink in a single swallow and pushed the glass forward and turned his attention back to Hope. Klaus wasn’t here, he was dead, but his daughter was alive and well sitting before him. “I’m not sure I believe you when you say that, love,” Kol told her at her mention of being ‘fine.’
“But it’s okay not to be,” he added. Putting on a brave face all the damn time or insisting that all was alright was bullshit as far as he was concerned. It might be eventually, but that didn’t mean it had to be today.
Hope smiled sadly. Her father did really care about her. She knew that she wasn’t blind to who he was to pretty much everyone else, but to her, he was good.
“I promised that I’d be okay, so, I am okay.” Hope insisted. She forced another smile. She had to be okay, that was just the way that things worked. Hope couldn’t let herself get close to anyone and she had to be okay. That was simply what it was.
“But, enough about me,” she said deflecting. “I want to know about you, your life here and everything.”
Kol still didn’t believe her, and in that moment, she reminded him far too much of her father. Klaus would often try to mask his own emotions but instead of acting like all was alright, he generally lashed out with violence instead. Still, it was a trait she came by naturally. He didn’t necessarily like her saying that she was alright because she promised she would be alright. Everything she was pushing down would come back up in some way sooner or later.
The look he gave her probably told her that the conversation wasn’t over, but he wasn’t going to push her anymore for now. He re-filled his own drink and topped off hers. “Compared to New Orleans and Mystic Falls, it can be quite boring,” he said with a small smile. Atlantis was anything but boring, but it wasn’t the murder, mayhem, and end of the world nonsense that they constantly dealt with at home.
“I spend my days here mostly,” he lifted his glass to motion around the bar. “Though I’ve been on a mission or two; those are interesting and unlike any fight I’ve fought in the past.” He raised his left hand and wiggled his fingers to show off his wedding ring. “Davina and I were married not even a month ago.”
His look told her everything. That part of the conversation was not over but he seemed to at least be letting it go for now. Hope figured she could dodge it for a while, or at least until Uncle Kol decided to sit her down and force her to talk about it.
“Boring? This place doesn’t look boring.” She teased with a small smile. “What are the missions like?” She asked curiously. She liked getting involved in things, well things that involved dealing with monsters and taking risks and being on her own.
“And I missed it!” Hope frowned just for a second but smiled a second later hearing how close the wedding was from when she got here. “I’m really happy for you both, you both deserve to be happy.” She really meant it too.
“I went to space once. An alien planet with these furry little things. Furlings, they called them. They reminded me of Ewoks or a large version of them although more advanced.” He shrugged. “Nearly brought one home,” he said with a sip of his drink. He was sure he would have never heard the end of it from everyone in command if he had, but oh well. “We were put through these tests to determine our ‘worthiness’ or some sort. We passed, of course.”
The other mission he had been on was a little more complicated. As much as there had been an advantage in being back in a place he knew and was familiar with, the overall mission was much more straightforward in a place he didn’t know personally.
“We went home a couple of months ago. Well, I was in Mystic Falls. Davina made the trip to New Orleans.” He didn’t mention that Klaus had been involved, but she might have been able to guess. Though, Hope wouldn’t have necessarily been familiar with the extreme timelines especially when going home for the missions.
“And then as you can see, we’ve had the cartoon My Little Pony this month. Atlantis is nothing if not unpredictable and imaginative.”
Hope’s eyes went from skeptical to just wide. “You know, I’d like to say you’re making up the furlings but I recently fought a dragon at home so I’m starting to think that pretty much anything is possible anymore.” Hope shrugged, but she did sort of want to see a furling.
“You went home for a mission? What was it like?” She almost asked if he’d seen her father but managed not to, that wouldn’t do her any good, he was dead and she had accepted it.
Tilting her head slightly she really wasn’t sure how to respond to the My Little Pony. “I guess I was more into chess pieces than I ever was My Little Pony.” She commented.
“There are dragons now? Damn. And I thought the flying horses here were cool.” He smirked. There was a lot from home that he’d have to catch up on somehow. Maybe. Based on some of what she was saying, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to see it play out before him on screen. At the thought of the mission to home, he shrugged.
“Strange. It was home, but it wasn’t home. Time can be strange here and during the missions teams are sent out on occasionally. I would have preferred to go to New Orleans with Davina, but I managed to keep myself busy in Mystic Falls.” He paused and gave her an amused look. “Without killing anyone of significance.” Oh, how satisfying it would have been if he’d bumped into Jeremy Gilbert and snapped his neck. Ah, well.
Drinking the remainder of his second drink, he gave a glance around the place. There were a couple others working, and it was a slow part of the day. It wouldn’t hurt to step out for a couple hours. “How much of Atlantis has Marcel shown you so far? We can stop by the base so that you can see Davina. She works in the Magic Department.”
“Yeah, all kinds of different things are coming back to life, even if it doesn’t make sense at all, all these things we all thought weren’t real, turns out they are.” She shrugged not thinking about what it might mean for the future.
“Uncle Kol!” She chided with a small eye roll. “But I can see where you’d want to go to New Orleans. Mystic Falls is, it’s a small town with too many secrets and not a lot else going for it.” That was how she felt about it at least. Besides that, everyone hated her family.
“He’s done a little, but I wanted to come see you, so he brought me here and made me promise to have dinner with him later, but there seems like a lot of stuff to see here.” She smiled thinking about Davina working in the Magic Department, it was the right fit for her. “I’d love to go see the base, and Davina.”
Kol simply smiled at her. He couldn’t help that Mystic Falls brought out his homicidal, psychotic tendencies from time to time. He’d been so good in Atlantis, and yes he’d been good in Mystic Falls, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been hard. He was certain he deserved a gold star for his behavior these last months.
“Well, consider me your tour guide,” he declared and took both of their glasses behind the counter and set them up to be cleaned. When he stepped back out from behind the bar, he offered her his arm. “Besides, I’m a lot more fun than Marcel,” he said with a wink.