Always & Forever

The next few days were... chaotic, to say the least. Between Kol and Elijah fawning over Octavia as if she were broken, Niklaus acting like he didn't care at all even though he was clearly concerned, meeting the long-lost Mikaelson sister Freya, having Rebekah be so excited Octavia was back that she insisted on throwing her a party, and meeting up with Marcellus and having him be just as non-cooperative as she would have thought, it left her head spinning. She'd forgotten what it was like to be around so many people at once. For the majority of the last seventy-five years, Octavia had been alone. It wasn't like she was upset about having all of them around; mostly she'd just missed them all so much, even though Nik still mostly refused to look at her and Marcellus was just as much of an insufferable little thing as he always had been.

After a week of being back in New Orleans, there was a knock on the door of the bedroom that Elijah and Kol had insisted Octavia take. She would have been fine with a hotel, but neither of them would hear it.

She glanced at the clock and wasn't surprised that it was almost three in the morning. The Mikaelsons had never really had much of a sense of time. Octavia moved to the door and wasn't totally surprised when Niklaus was on the other side of it.

"Nik."

She said his name quietly, and he pushed past her into the room and shut the door behind himself.

"Hello to you too."

She said the words quietly and smirked at him as he paced in front of her.

"I need to know. I need to know, Octavia!"

He slurred the words just slightly and it was clear he was drunk. She smirked at him again and he turned to her, eyes blazing.

"What do you need to know, love?"

She asked the question even though she was pretty sure she knew what he was going to say.

"Why did you do it? Why did you have an affair with my brother?"

She nodded, getting the exact question she'd expected.

"I don't know. I don't have a definitive answer to that question, Nik."

He shook his head roughly.

"Then give me your best guess!"

His voice was angry but his eyes were watery with tears.

"It... I... I don't know, Nik. It wasn't because I was unhappy with you necessarily. You know how much I loved you. I was absolutely obsessed with you. You were my entire world."

"But Elijah..."

"Elijah was so... different. He was so different from you. You were cold and closed off and Elijah was warm and wide-open. I don't know how it happened, but it did and I loved you both, Niklaus. I didn't stop loving you when I started loving him. My love for him was just so different than my love for you. That's why I couldn't choose between you. You were both so different and made me feel such different things. I know it's my fault. I know I shouldn't have run. Hell, I know I shouldn't have let myself have feelings for your brother when you and I were together in the first place, but it's not like I made a conscious decision to make it happen."

Klaus mulled over her words for a long time before turning and leaving the room without another word. She heard him moving down the hall and slamming his own bedroom door. She rolled her eyes in his general direction, sitting back down at the small desk she'd been reading a book at. She couldn't believe Klaus was still so incapable of telling someone how he was actually feeling.

A moment later, Kol appeared in her doorway with a wide smile on his face. She cocked her head to the side in question and he stepped into the room and pulled her into a hug and spun her around wildly. She giggled in his grasp but then asked him what the hell had gotten into him.

"We found a lead. We found a witch who might be able to help you!"

His happiness was infectious and made her momentarily forget about her conversation with Klaus.