Atlantis. Well, this was a new one. Hayley thought she'd just about seen everything. Not that Atlantis seemed such a bad place so far. It was just, well, different from what she knew. She didn't always fit in with different, but she seemed to be getting along alright. Besides. Hope was here, and Klaus. She hated to admit it, but Klaus was as much family as Hope now.
"So, do you take all the newcomers to your favorite bar, or is this just my lucky day?" She leaned against the bar, looking around. The Atlantis Rousseau's was an exact replica of the one back home. If she didn't know better, she'd have thought they were back in New Orleans, recovering after the latest round of Mikaelson drama (and boy was there a lot of that lately!).
“It’s uncanny, isn’t it?” Klaus said, gesturing around at the very familiar scene. Rousseau’s was a little piece of home in the midst of a foreign city. He would have spent a fair amount of his time here even if he wasn’t being paid to do so.
Slipping behind the bar like he owned the place (it was close enough, anyway), he picked up a good bottle of bourbon and two glasses, pouring them each a double before offering one to her.
Hayley nodded, taking the drink. "I'd say so, but it must be good to have something familiar?" She hadn't meant for that to be a question, but a part of her didn't know if she wanted Atlantis to be familiar. So much had changed in the past few weeks back home, so much that she didn't want to dredge back up right now. "Atlantis itself doesn't quite seem like anywhere we've -- or I've at least been before."
“It has it’s very unique set of charms.” Klaus hesitated, wondering how to go about catching her up on the large amount of things she hadn’t lived yet. Most thought him heartless, even cruel, but he considered Hayley family and had no wish to hurt her. Perhaps it was partly guilt over being unable to stop some of it. He might not even tell her if it weren’t for the fact that their daughter was from beyond both of them and the burden shouldn’t be hers. He wouldn’t let it be.
“There are things you haven’t lived yet that I need to tell you about,” he said carefully. The usual smirk was gone, replaced by a more serious look.
Hayley felt on her guard at Klaus's words. She'd seen Klaus serious before, and she knew that look wasn't usually accompanied with good news. Life with the Mikaelsons was fraught with drama and difficulty and well, to put it bluntly, death. She never knew which of the three would come next, though oftentimes they came all at once.
"Better out than in, they say," she said, bracing herself for whatever Klaus had to say. "Go for it."
“We’re dead,” he said bluntly. Klaus was never good at being subtle and he wasn’t sure if there was a way to sugarcoat it anyway. Better to get it out in the open and let Hayley start processing the news. “You, me, Elijah. Hope is here from a time when we’re all gone.”
Hayley's heart fell at his words. She'd done everything to make sure that she had a family, something different from her own life, and she'd failed. She swallowed back questions - the hows, the whats, and the whys -- before settling on one. "When?" She wanted to know how much time they had with their daughter. Was it immediate? Did they all fall one after another? None of it seemed more bearable, exactly, but it was perhaps a start.
“Hope was 15 when it happened.” She hadn’t asked for how, but he volunteered an explanation anyway. “We were protecting her. We sacrificed our own lives so she could live.” Maybe he was sparing her a few details in that simplified explanation, but he thought the important thing was that they’d succeeded in saving Hope.
Hayley got that. That was what they always did -- everything to protect Hope. If they all had to go...well at least they had that going for them.
"Like we always do," she said, thinking back to the past few months and the loss of Jackson. She took a long drink, thinking. "I'm glad that she had us for the time she did, and that we're here now. Looks like that's another thing Atlantis has going for it."
“Indeed.” Klaus agreed with both sentiments. He pushed the bottle he’d poured their drinks from across the bar and grabbed another for himself. “To Hope and to second chances,” he said, lifting his bottle in a toast once he’d opened it.