Always & Forever

Kol took her hand and led her to a warehouse that seemed  abandoned. However, when he stepped through the threshold, the room they  were standing in turned into a beautifully furnished apartment. Octavia  looked at him, impressed.

"What? Of course I've got some witch friends."

Kol's words were supposed to be playful and she knew it, but instead they made her cry again.

She'd  been a witch all those years ago before Niklaus, and a damn good one  too. She hadn't even triggered her werewolf curse yet when she'd met him  but he'd sensed it in her and told her about it. They'd both been  confused about the fact that somehow she was both witch and  non-triggered wolf, but then they'd found out that her mother was a  non-practicing witch and her father came from a line of wolves even  though he'd never triggered his own curse. She was so intrigued that  she'd gone out of her way to trigger the curse for herself. Then when  Nik had offered to turn her into a vampire and make her a hybrid like  him, she'd jumped at the chance. He'd promised that she'd still be able  to practice magic afterward, but of course she hadn't been able to.  She'd never quite known if he'd lied to her on purpose or if he just  didn't know. Either way, she missed her magic.

When she looked up at Kol a moment later, he was pouring two drinks at a cart on the other side of the room. He moved to her and handed her one. She took a generous swig before looking at him again.

"Are they in the compound?"

She tossed the question into the air knowing Kol would know exactly what she was talking about. The Mikaelson compound was smack-dab in the middle of the French Quarter, and she assumed that it was where Elijah and Klaus lived now that they'd been back a few years. Kol nodded and took a sip from his own drink.

"Me too, technically. I don't know if they know about this place and just don't care or if they just don't care about me period anymore. Most of my things are there but I spend most nights here since..."

Kol trailed off and she went and sat beside him on the couch.

"Seems like you've got a lot to catch me up on."

They sat there for hours. Kol did most of the talking, and Octavia was glad for it. She'd missed having someone tell her about their lives and she'd missed him just in general. They talked and laughed and drank and for those few hours, everything felt normal in her life for the first time in a very long time.

Finally, the silence she'd known was coming fell over them and Kol studied her, his deep brown eyes so warm and caring. The more she looked at them, the more she saw Elijah in them and she had to look away. She'd never noticed how similar their gazes were before that moment.

"You've gotta give me something here, O. I'm out of stories to tell."

Kol's voice was gentle and made tears rise to Octavia's eyes again. He watched her intently as she re-positioned herself.

"I'm dying, Kol."

She figured that beating around the bush or avoiding weren't even worth it. Kol was very much a cut-to-the-chase kind of guy and it was one of the things she loved most about him. Kol's eyes clouded over with something she couldn't quite put her finger on and then he laughed.

"Sure you are."

His words were a joke, but when he saw the look on her face, his smile faded instantly.

"I am."

She confirmed it for him and he was instantly confused.

"Not possible."

He looked at her and she was sure she saw a shadow of tears threatening to pour out of his eyes.

"You know I haven't been the best behaved over the years. Since I left here and left Nik and Elijah, I've been a little bit off the rails, never having a real home, never really knowing where I was going. Well, last year I was in Paris and pissed off the wrong witch. She put a curse on me and I remembered it from when I had my magic. Back then, it was a defense against vampires. It knocked them out by aging their brain rapidly to the point of a very old human and taking away all of their abilities. It rendered them powerless, but only for a short time because their brains would eventually heal and go back to normal. The incantation was the same when she used it on me, but she seems to have somehow tweaked it. I can feel myself aging, Koley. It was pretty slowly at first, but now it seems like every day my memories get scarcer and my powers get weaker and I'm not healing. I know it's going to eventually kill me. I can feel it."

Kol studied her even harder than before, obviously mulling over her words in his head.

"What can I do?"

He finally asked the question after a few solid minutes.

"No idea. That's why I came; to talk to Nik and Elijah and see if they know anything about this. I've exhausted all of my resources and have found nothing. I figure at the very least, they can probably get Marcellus to find something somewhere, assuming that little git is still lurking around, of course."

Kol laughed and nodded.

"He's still around. He's something of a king around here, actually."

"Ugh."

They both rolled their eyes and laughed again. In that moment, sitting there with her best friend, she couldn't believe how ridiculously okay everything seemed.