The Queen Slayer {2}

Hope In A Bleak World

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

What is a father?

A father was meant to be there at their child's side, protecting them from the evils in the world. A father was meant to support their children, helping guide them through the early years in preparation for their adult lives.

A father was meant to provide protection, love and support. They were meant to ensure that their children could survive in this world.

Mikael had not been a father.

He had been a General, training his children like soldiers, treating them as such when they fell below expectations.

The topic of fathers had always been a delicate one for Klaus. A subject that had his rage simmering as taunting memories of centuries of torture from the man who had raised him continued to plague him even a thousand years later. The meaning of being a father had been on his mind more than ever over the past year.

Father.

That one word taunted him once again following the reveal of Buffy's pregnancy. Upon his daughter's birth, he had found himself terrified, worried that he would be unable to provide her with the care she deserved.

He intended to be the opposite of Mikael when it came to his daughter, not wanting to subject her to the cruelty he had been brought up under, the cruelty that had taught him how to be the man that so many feared.

Though, since sending Joy away and being forced to keep his distance from Buffy for the time being, he had been lost to his own thoughts about his capabilities as a parent.

Buffy had been a natural, even if she doubted her ability as a mother, he did not doubt that she would be the best mother to their daughter.

When it came to his own abilities, in his moments of weakness, he couldn't help but wonder just how deeply Mikael had embedded him with darkness.

The dinner with his mother and Finn, her declaring she wanted them all to be placed in the bodies of mortals to live out a natural life span, had gotten into the depths of his mind.

Not with the thoughts of a human life, but of the father he had never known.

The wolf from their village that he never once been able to connect with because his mother had lied to all of them about his parentage.

Esther's attempts at fixing her mistake had granted Klaus something he had only dreamed about from the second he found out Mikael was not his true father.

Hiding away in the Bayou with the Crescents having been resurrected by Esther, granted another chance at life was Ansel.

His birth father.

The man who should have raised him, teaching him about the serenity of life as a wolf, guiding him as their shared love of art bloomed, was right in front of him for the first time in a thousand years.

Yet, this day was bittersweet.

While a part of him longed to believe his father's kindness and unconditional love, it didn't change the reasoning behind his return to the living plane. Esther had brought him back, the woman who had been intent on killing him and his siblings.

Determined to end Buffy and Joy's existence just for their ties to him.

As much as he wished that he could trust his father's words, he did not trust Esther not to use what he knew against him.