A Twist Through Time (A TVDU fic)

Chapter 25

The next morning, Klaus was in his art room, staring at a canvas he was working on. Usually art helped him deal with emotions, or at least help sometimes. Hope had left him. He knew she was leaving, but he had thought he would get to see her that night, alone. Instead, after the ball, he had gone to find her and found a note on the bed in her room instead. A letter. And then it had burned shortly he finished reading it.

Dad,

I assume you are the one finding this, though it could be another member of our family stumbling upon this. I know our family, especially you, wished to get to know me better before I left, but that cannot happen. If I had let you all have proper goodbyes with me, I would not have allowed myself to leave. You all mean so much to me that all I want to do is stay, but I've put far too much at risk. Every time I try to fix something, it just falls apart. If I do anything to help, my friends could end up not existing. I have to believe nature will fix the course that I disrupted. As long as I stop disrupting it.

I've left town to find a way to return to my time. There are some places that could potentially have a lead on finding answers for me to return home. To my time. No, I am not telling you where I am going. I know you have other witches you could use, though you'd be right with your lack of trust in them. However, any attempts at tracking me will only result into the blood forming a smiley face on the map. Part of me wanted to just block it and not do anything creative, but it seemed like a potentially good idea to add some art to it.

I know you want to find me, but you shouldn't. You'll see me again as a baby. I won't remember meeting you like I did, but our story isn't over. You'll see me again. Just don't change anything because of what you know. Let it play out. No matter how hard it gets, and it will get hard. I'm glad I got to meet this version of you and understand you even better than I did before. You never really wanted to talk about your past to me, no matter if I had questions. This helped answer some of them. It helped answer questions I didn't even realize I had.

I may not be able to go with you, but you deserve a vacation whenever you have a break from everything going on. Even if it's a small one. Just take a walk on a beach for no reason other than to walk on a beach. Go for a swim. Let yourself relax for a few moments at least. I know you have other enemies. But Mikael is gone. You've been running from him for a thousand years. Take a moment to enjoy his absence.

Even though I've left, you're someone I never wanted to leave. I want to go on vacation with you and learn how to create weaponry, but that seems to be something that can only be done in the future. You'll see me again in the future. And no matter what happens, we are going to be family.

Always and Forever,

Your littlest wolf

Klaus let out a small sigh as the words replayed in his mind. He hadn't really wanted to talk to anyone about this. He told them she left but didn't say anything else about the letter. The same letter he had been replaying in his head in efforts to keep memorized as much as he could. He didn't want to talk to any of his siblings, no matter how much he wanted to ensure that things were improving between them. He didn't even want to find Caroline Forbes and speak to her again. Not yet. Hope's disappearance was affecting him more than he had expected, though perhaps it was the lack of goodbye.

He loved his daughter and had grown very attached to having her around. She was the one person that didn't want to leave him. But in the end, she left him as well. To preserve the timeline. And unlike with everyone else, he couldn't find it in himself to be upset with her. He just felt... lonely. The type of lonely that couldn't be cured by being surrounded by people. So instead, he was working on a painting of his daughter where her face was hardly visible. He used dark hues around her but showed her in a bright light. This would fall under paintings he didn't let anyone else see. It spoke of his feelings in ways he wasn't sure he could completely put into words. And he didn't feel comfortable letting anyone see him that vulnerable. No matter how much it would please Elijah to see that he cared for someone other than himself.