Grace - Elijah Mikaelson -

Chapter 78

"What do you think, Hope? Shall we make some pancakes today?"  

Grace propped Hope up on her hip and swirled around the kitchen with her. Of course the little girl wouldn't answer, but over the past few months these kind of monologues had become a habit of her. At least Hope wouldn't give unwanted feedback. 

The baby just squeaked happily and clapped her hands in joy. Out of the fridge she got the necessary  items and she started the making some Gilbert-family-recipe pancakes. 

It sometimes still felt oddly normal. Most of the time she spent in New Orleans there hadn't been a quite minute, danger and enemies lingered around them all the time and she got sucked into the whole business rapidly. 

But since Dahlia's death everything had been relatively quiet. Except from the tension in the families' inner circle. Grace and Elijah moved into the compound again and being this close to Nik had caused both of them sleepless nights and an overall grim mood. After a short time, Grace learnt to distracted herself. She picked up her studies again and she fully bloomed in her role as an aunt. Elijah on the other hand distracted, himself, too, he only resided at the compound at night or if Nik went god knows where. He had problems keeping himself together around Nik and because of that it was probably better if the brothers kept apart as much as possible. 

Still, Elijah did his best to be there for his niece. Every full moon he brought her to Hayley, so the suffering mother could at least see her at this horribly short amount of time. He also was often there when Grace cared about the little girl and helped a lot which was perfectly adorable. 

But the best part of every week was their little ritual of date night. Every Saturday evening they went out and Elijah always surprised her with something new: sometimes a fancy, exotic restaurants, a theater play that made her cry, cinema showing a movie in a foreign language with subtitles or wine tasting. Once he even gave another guest lecture at university which was quite funny considering the circumstances. 

Elijah really tried his best to pick the shards up. But even though they spent the most romantic evening and despite the fact that the tension between them was through the roof, nothing happened. Whenever one of them tried to make a move, the other pulled away. It was the right time and they both wanted it, but something always kept them from finally admitting it. 

Ariana and Rebekah, her newly announced consultants considering such issues, always wanted to yell at her whenever she told them that again not even a kiss happened. Grace was so happy to have them both, even if Rebekah was so far away, trying to find a way to bring back Kol. 

Another good thing born out of the circumstances was the growing easiness between Freya and Grace. They both knew that they were the only ones who were really up to change diapers and read bed time stories and over that, the two women threw their slight mistrust away and bonded. It made things a lot simpler, especially because Freya was actually quite the nice person.

"You know what? Auntie Gracie wrote her last exam for this semester yesterday, which means she has loads of free time. What do you think? Television all day to forget my very real problems?" 

She mumbled while spinning a pancake in the pan. Studying for exams really had occupied her mind a lot, so she wouldn't waste one thought about her broken friendship with Nik. Grace tried her best to not act silly around him, but she still only spoke as less as possible to him. Of course he tried to have a serious every day and he apologized countless times, but Grace wasn't ready to forgive him and she just wanted to be left alone. 

So auntie duty had to take over the whole day. Maybe she could also go to Marcel and the newbie vamps a little more. Since Marcel and Elijah ran the city, things worked well between the factions and teaching the newly created was an enjoyable task.