Always And Forever /4/ TO

Ch. 1 Malraux

Rory Forbes climbed up into the basement, turning on the light as she did so. She walked over to the coffins, lifting the lid to reveal her best friend. She sighed as she looked down at Elijah, missing him, Freya, Rebekah, and Kol. The person she missed most, however, was the only one that she couldn't see.

Her fingers instinctively went to her crescent moon necklace around her neck, hoping that this would be the last time she ever came up here to see part of her family in a coffin.

She made her way back down stairs. She went to the living room and leaned against the wall as she watched Hope draw and Lilly read. They heard a car pull up and Hope looked up from her drawing. "Is that her?" she asked.

"Let me check. Stay inside," she told them. Lilly just gave her a thumbs up, not looking away from the page in her lap. Hope smiled and went back to her drawing.

Rory walked outside, seeing the blue truck pull up. She walked out, meeting Hayley and Mary at the truck. "Well, now, aren't you a sight?" Mary asked, smiling. Hayley hugged her sister.

"You're sure no one followed you?" Rory asked in concern.

"I've been avoiding trouble since well before you were born. Now, where's those little girls?" Mary asked.

"Did you find it?" Rory asked, stopping the older woman. Mary looked at her, clearly not wanting to answer. "Mary, please. After all this time, I am this close to getting them back. I found a cure for Freya's poison, I got the twins to siphon Rebekah's hex."

"So you're really gonna do it? Cure 'em and then wake 'em up? Did you ever stop to think, Hope and Lilly might be better off without 'em?" Mary asked.

"No, I didn't. I made a promise," Rory told her.

"To who? To Klaus?" Mary wondered.

"To myself and my daughters. I promised them both a safe home where they would feel safe and protected by the people that love them. I promised myself that one day the three of us wouldn't be all we had," Rory said. She sighed.

"Mary, Lilly already lost her biological dad. And Hope is a Mikaelson. She's inherited all of their enemies and a power that I don't understand. She needs someone to teach her to control it. Lilly needs Kol here to explain to us how her powers work. I can't do this on my own," Rory told her.

"You told me to wake the Mikaelsons you needed to find all seven werewolf packs. You found six. The last one- the Malraux- I thought they'd been killed off," Mary said, gesturing to Hayley.

The hybrid pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. "According to this, there might be one left," she told her sister.

Rory reached for it, but Hayley stopped her. "Rory, you looked for five years. You found nothing. Suddenly, we get word of a lead. What if someone else found it, too? What if it's a trap?" she asked.

Rory thought about it. She knew that if anything happened to her, all the Mikaelsons were dead. But if she didn't go after this, they would be anyway. She took the paper and started walking towards her house. Mary and Hayley exchanged a look, before following.

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Rory got the coffins loaded into the truck and got her things ready. She closed the door to the truck and turned to face her daughters. "Do you have to go?" Hope asked.

"I do. But I'll be back very, very soon. And I won't be alone," she said, her and Hope smiling.

"Promise?" Lilly asked, a frown still on her face.

Rory nodded. "Yes, I promise," she said. "Now come here."

The nine year old hugged her mother. "I'll call you both every night before bed, okay?" Rory asked as she pulled away from Lilly. She pulled Hope into a quick hug, before leaning forward so she was eye level with both. "In the meantime, you two listen to Grandma Mary and Aunt Hayley, deal?" she wondered. She kissed two fingers and held them out to Hope.