⚜ For reasons
➥ AU, post TO Finale
✥ Trigger Warnings: none
There was nothing quite like New Orleans in October. The warm air still held the sticky heat of humidity born from the swamps, but a merciful breeze rustled the leaves of the great oak trees and the Spanish moss that clung to their branches. As a city that revered its dead and was known for its penchant towards the macabre, everything culminated to a crescendo of such unearthly ambiance this time of year. With the nearing of the Samhain festival and Halloween, people looked for ways to honor the dead. Was such reverence born from a want to pay homage to passed souls, or was there a more selfish need ? Was it possible that the denizens of the delta city sought comfort in the ideas of an afterlife and keeping such memories alive so that their own histories wouldn’t be forgotten once they departed their flesh that tied to the mortal realm ?
Such naivety spelled a fool’s tale, for the answers they sought, the comfort they craved, could be found all around them. From the blooms of the magnolias to the cicadas that inhabit them. Autumn is a time of death, of withering away into that deep, eternal sleep promised to us all at the end of the journey. Yet if people truly opened their eyes and learned from the world that surrounded them, they’d see that such death always leads to a return. Spring will come and with it, new life. Nature always held its loopholes in that way. Nothing dead ever stayed gone forever.
It was these thoughts of cycles and repetition that danced through his mind as he made his way through the familiar streets of the city. Footsteps echoed off the bricked buildings, the sounds heavy with the expensive leather shoes hitting the wet cobblestones. The sun had long since set, the perfect metaphor for the figure’s current disposition, because even without it, there was no shortage of life. A surfeit of jubilance rang through the New Orleans bars, spilling out into the streets. A revelry to herald the coming, the figure thought to himself. Moonlight casted its ethereal glow on the scene below. Not a single person took notice of him as he continued his stride in a straight line, easily parting the drunken crowd with his mere presence.
There was a destination, after all. One didn’t make the harrowing journey through death and rebirth to simply while away hours with libations and company. This was something that he was already too familiar with. This wasn’t his first rodeo after all. The fact that they thought such demise held any semblance of permanence made him scoff with amused derision. Nothing is ever set in stone, least not for him. He was the walking embodiment of continuation, of impermeability. Of immortality.
Standing the test of time just as he did, stood the old building that had weathered centuries in the French Quarter. His accomplishment, his fortress, his kingdom, his home. The Abattoir, endearingly named for its reputation of red stained walls and the perpetual smell of blood that clung to the stone ramparts. There was life within these walls, no longer abandoned to the whims of time to crumble and fall as it would. No, the compound still played home to his family, but his return would certainly shake things up. Were they expecting him ? Were they the cause of such unholy resurrection ? He would find out soon enough.
Standing in the courtyard, blue eyes gazing upon his surroundings, Klaus Miklaeson’s smirk dimpled his cheeks with a sinister glee.
❝ Le roi est mort.
Vive le roi. ❞