"Hey Hales," Odette walked into the compound and threw her jacket onto one of the couches. The smell of the fresh breakfast in front of Hayley penetrated her nose.

"Are we celebrating something?" Hayley shrugged as her mouth was full and Odette popped a grape into her own. She chewed on the juicy flesh.

"So which restaurant is missing a compelled chef?" Hayley had noticed Klaus standing on the stairs sooner that Odette had, hybrid hearing and all. Odette looked up at him, he smirked at her appearance.

"It's certainly a card I've played in the past, but I had no hand in this."

Another grape, she swallowed, "I guess Elijah decided to spoil us for once?"

"This wasn't my doing.." Elijah's voice suddenly came from behind Odette, making her drop the strawberry she had just picked up.

"'Lijah please stop doing that!" he held up his hands in defensive stance. Klaus took a step further down the stairs and frowned, "Then, where did all this come from?"

Out of nowhere a silver lid started to rattle, a sound that startled all the beings in the room. Klaus walked down to the ground floor and laid a careful hand on the handle. He looked at Odette, she nodded. He released the lid, out came two starlings, the four ducked to avoid being hit by the birds.

"What the hell was that?" Hayley asked as the starlings flew further up to the ceiling. Odette spotted the tiny note laying in the middle of the platter, picked it up and handed it to Niklaus.

"Why are you giving it to me?"

"I don't bloody live here, if it was meant for me it would've been sent to my house." Klaus raised his brows and opened the note. He read it quickly, Odette watched as his eyes flicked across the page.

"It's an invitation from our mother." Odette stepped forward, in some effort to comfort him, or be good, in the process she squished the strawberry she had just dropped under the foot of her shoe. The red-pink juices spilled over the white fabric.

-

"Okay, so skip the salad course. I don't think Niklaus here feels like making the evening any longer than it is." Odette checked off a box on the paper she had been handed. She would have had to go to work today, but Cami had taken her place so she could help out with the dinner the Mikaelsons were planning.

She looked over the list of wines, she hadn't ever seen wine this expensive.

"Nik, what wine do you want?"

He approached her slowly, fluffed his hair up with his hand and took the wine list from Odette's hands. Their fingers brushed together in a strange familiarity.

Klaus checked one of the boxes for a red wine that Odette didn't know anything about and handed the clipboard back to the girl.

"There you go." She took it from him, pen and all. Odette walked to the dining table and began to align the plates and napkins, laying them down as perfectly straight as she could. Her phone buzzed in her back pocket, as she took it out she looked at the pink stains on her shoes.

"I'll buy you new ones of those." Klaus said, as Odette read the text that Hayley had sent to her.

"Please don't. Hayley texted me, because you never look at your phone, Oliver says your mother has a partner-in-crime, another witch."

"I do look at my phone, I just think it's a criminal way of spending your time."

She rolled her eyes, "Ha. But what do you make of that news?"

He shrugged, "building alliances in her quest to destroy us, I imagine." Odette stuffed her phone back into her pocket and started to mess with the cutlery again.

"That's a bit blasé, don't you think? Your mother had six children, there is at least a bit of a maternal gene in there. Does she truly hate you that much?"

Klaus started to pace through the room, from one side to the other, over and over again.

"Seven, actually. And, I think at one time, she loved us all very much." Odette straightened out another tablemat, she thought that she should iron it sometime.

"Seven?"

"One died before I was born."

Odette swallowed loudly, "I'm sorry to hear that, Nik." Chair legs scraped over the floor as she bumped into them.

"Years later, my brother Henrik was killed by the werewolves in our village. The loss of another child pushed my mother over the edge. So, she used her magic to turn us into immortals. I think that's when she loved us the most. But, it was her undoing. It triggered a sequence of events that led to the reveal of her long-held secret. My birth father was the werewolf whose pack killed my little brother. Of course, when Mikael found out, he murdered my real father, and so, my mother lost her lover, too."

She frowned, Odette had known most of these things already, there was an entire Mikaelson history course available in the Cunningham Coven, but hearing it from him made it feel so much more real.

"No wonder she's crazy. Hope's absence is driving me bonkers and she isn't even my daughter, nor is she dead." When she turned around to look at Klaus, there were tears in his eyes. Something ripped through her heart at the sight, she wanted to wipe them away but knew that this would only make him more uncomfortable with his emotions.

"You know, my siblings used to tell each other she didn't hate us-- she hated herself for what we've become. I think they believed that even after she tried to kill us all." She stepped closer to him carefully, until she was close enough to touch the scruff of his jaw, to touch his face with a gentle hand. She thought his tears flickered in the light like diamonds.

"What did you believe?" her voice quiet and trembling as he looked at her with an intense stare.

Another shrug, tears that dried, "I don't know. I just knew I wanted her dead."

He continued to stare as she did, they both felt that there was no palpable awkwardness, that their combined silence was also filled with a thousand words.

Odette cracked a small smile and broke it, "Well, every good story needs a wicked witch." She let go of his jaw and kept smiling.

He nodded, "and a good one at that. We're lucky we have both."

"It'll be all the more satisfying when we melt her."

-

"Okay, I really have to go now." Odette set the last centerpiece down onto the dining table. A gorgeous bouquet of white and pink roses. In the room next to the dining room, with an open connection Klaus sat on a red couch. He had only just returned from his meeting with Marcel.

"Why?"

She sighed, "I have an important test tomorrow. Also I don't want to have dinner with your mom."

"You don't want to meet the family?"

The petal she held in her hand got weaker every time she let her finger slide over it, but she couldn't help herself. It was in her nature to corrupt innocence.

"I'll meet the family that matters," she turned to look at his, he gazed at her hand which held the petal she just plucked, "it's not like your mother likes me much, Nik. As my parents don't like you much. I don't really care about my family's acceptance of you." She turned around to face the table again, within a second Niklaus was behind her, his large hand surrounding her shoulder. She didn't feel the need to do anything to prove herself to him, nor anxiety at his strong and powerful hand holding onto her. She took the petal and held it between both of her hands, then she held her hands above the bouquet she had stolen it from. She closed her eyes.

"Redire ad vitam." She spoke and opened her hands, the petal attached itself back onto the flower slowly, unfolding and gaining back some of its beautiful color. A bruise formed on the place where Klaus held onto her shoulder.

"Ouch," he immediately let go of the space and looked at the bruise he had left behind. Perfectly formed in his hand print.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..."

She waved him off, "It wasn't your fault. It was the magic."

He frowned and took her hand to make her face him, "the magic hurts you."

It wasn't a question, but Odette knew he craved an answer.

"It's the Cunningham curse. The magic abuses us."

A rage emerged inside of Klaus as he thought of all the magic she had done for him, as he thought of the bruises on her legs that time on the balcony, as he thought of these stupid flowers.

"Then why are you using it to do useless things?!"

She just smiled in response to his anger, there was nothing for her to fear.

"The magic corrupts innocence, it's in her nature. But, my nature forces me to fix things. I can never leave a broken thing behind without trying to heal it."

really quick little chapter while the painkillers are working.

I hope you liked it.

Rosie.