chapter forty, the birthday

Her son's funeral would be in a week, and together she and Kol had decided that it would be best if she went back to Mystic Falls for the time being. At least there she had people who could support her and keep her company.

She'd hardly spoken to anyone since she'd gotten back, only several "thank you's" and a few small "hellos". She knew that she had many missed calls from Bonnie, maybe even some from Jeremy and Elena too—she'd even received one from Caroline despite never having been close to her.

Klaus had tried to comfort her as much as he could. Once a day—twice if she was lucky—usually in the afternoon, he would sit next to her on her bed and talk to her. About his day. About his paintings. About the delicate beauty of the earth. About Caroline. She never responded, but he knew that she appreciated it. Sometimes, especially later in the day or closer to night, she would rest her head on his shoulder, maybe even fall asleep. She missed this side of her uncle; the caring side. He hadn't been like this since he was human.

Bonnie had gone to visit her. The two had watched a movie together in silence, both wanting to share a million experiences but neither knowing how. Their friendship had been shattered. Repairing it would take time.

To try and cheer Marian up, she'd also organised for Penny, Hannah, and Jack to spend some time at the Mikaelson mansion. They, of course, didn't know that it was Marian's child who'd died—Bonnie had told them that it was her grandfather—but they'd all agreed that they'd love to keep her company and make sure that she knew that they loved her.

"So where's Uncle Hottie tonight?" Hannah asked jokingly, arm looped around Jack's as they sat around in Marian's room. Her constant teasing made Marian incredibly uncomfortable, but she knew that Hannah would never try anything with him.

"He had to leave for work," Marian answered. "He's in Oslo."

Penny looked up excitedly. "He's in Oslo? Like, where they filmed 'Skam'?" Marian rolled her eyes. The three of them had watched the first season together and were just waiting for the next one to come out. Jack hadn't been interested in it.

"Imagine if Elijah was in 'Skam'," said Hannah dreamily. Jack hit her arm lightly.

"Anyway," Marian stressed, not wanting to talk about Elijah anymore. She was still hurt that he had left them without so much as a note to explain why. Klaus had eventually told her about their argument in the hospital; it seemed that recently she'd become his confidante of sorts. "What should we do?" Penny stuck her tongue out at her.

"We could play a game?" Jack suggested, a cheeky smirk on his face. Marian shrugged her shoulders passively—prematurely, one might say—thinking that he was thinking of games such as chess, which she was quite fond of. "Seven minutes in heaven? I call dibs on Hannah." Marian and Penny looked at each other in disgust.

"You can't call dibs on a person, Jack," she chastised.

"Shrek?" Penny suggested.

"Only if we watch the second one after," Hannah added. Marian didn't press for them to watch the third one too. She knew she was the only one who liked it, and it was only because she found Prince Arthur quite attractive. And so, Penny crawled over to the TV cabinet and searched for the DVD, putting it into the player and turning the TV on. The four friends settled down, watching the kids film together. It was a group favourite.

Penny was in the process of setting up the second disk when she spoke up.

"So," said Penny, taking a sip of her lemonade. "We've missed you at school." She looked at Marian. "You've missed quite a bit recently."

"Yeah, I'd actually left Mystic Falls for a bit when I found out about my... grandfather."

"With who?"

"My Dad," said Marian.

"Didn't you just meet him, like, a week ago?" Jack asked.

Marian looked down sheepishly, taking a deep breath. She couldn't think of any other way to get out of this. She couldn't keep it a secret any longer. All she wanted to do was tell them the truth. She wasn't normal. Her family wasn't normal. She wasn't an orphan. She wasn't grieving her grandfather. "Actually, I've known him for way longer."

Hannah frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You guys are gonna think I'm crazy," the witch muttered. She shook her head. "I don't want to say it."

"No. You can't say something like that and not tell us," Penny groaned.

Marian closed her eyes. "Okay. Here it goes." She felt stupid. "I'm a thousand-year-old ex-witch and my family are vampires."

Hannah snorted as the others laughed. "Good one."

Marian groaned, regretting trying to tell them the whole truth. Why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut? "Guys, I'm not—"

"Since when have you been good at lying?" teased Penny. She was right; Marian was a very bad liar. She had been for a thousand years.

Marian sighed. "Just," she began, only coming short. She stood from her seat on her bed and opened a small jewellery chest that sat on her bedside table. It was filled with pieces of jewellery and photographs from her past lives. Taking out an old picture, she handed it to Penny face-down. "What does it say?" she prompted, pointing to the writing that was on the back of the picture.

"The Mikaelsons, Marian's birthday, nineteen-fourteen," she read aloud, a deep frown etching into her forehead. Quickly turning it over, she stared at the photograph in disbelief. Hannah and Jack stood up from the floor to see.

"Photoshop," said Hannah.

"Why do you look way older?" asked Jack. It seemed odd to him that she looked like she was in her twenties in the image.

"Okay," she said, trying to think of a way to make them believe her with her magic gone. Trying to push back her fear that she'd look like a total fool in front of her only friends, she stood up and grabbed three candles from her desk and put them in the middle of the four of them.

"Here goes nothing," she thought, sitting cross legged with her palms resting face-up on her knees. She pleaded with the witches to give her something. Anything. She closed her eyes.

She heard her friends gasp as all of the candles plotted around her room, not just the three she'd brought over, were instantly lit, producing a dim light. Someone let out a squeal, probably Jack.

Marian sighed with relief, inspecting the three candles in front of her intensely. She noticed that one of them had small runes running down it. Henrik waz here. Her uncle. She silently thanked him and smiled.

Jack huffed out a laugh as the three friends looked around in awe. "Holy shit."

"No way," said Hannah. "No freaking way."

Marian looked at Penny. "You alright?"

Penny shook her head. "No," she admitted. "But I think—I think I'll be okay. Sometime."

Hannah and Jack demanded that Marian explain herself, and so she told them about how she was born a witch a thousand years ago, and was forced to live and die again and again until her father died too.

"I'm kinda cursed," Marian told them, trying to think of the easiest way to explain her predicament to her friends. "I can die, but I'll keep coming back to life as long as my dad lives."

"What?"

"I almost died when I was, like, four," she explained. "So my grandmother—who's a witch, too—bound my life to my dad's. And because he then became immortal, I technically became immortal too."

Marian remembered that night very clearly; how she'd screamed until her throat went raw, weeping at the sight of her family who'd been murdered right in front of her. It hadn't taken long for a wound identical to her father's to appear in her abdomen, and crying even more, she fell to the ground. Kol had awoken as she'd taken her last breath, being forced to drink the blood of a girl from their village before he could rush over to her and hold her in his arms. It was her very first death.

"So how accurate are books?" asked Hannah.

Marian shrugged. "No wands or brooms," she revealed. "Vampires don't sparkle; they burn in sunlight unless they're protected by magic. There's no venom and the process of becoming a vampire is more complicated."

"And your whole family are... vampires?" Jack asked. It felt weird saying those words and meaning them.

"Yep."

"Marian, love," called Klaus. The girl closed her eyes in annoyance. "Do you mind keeping it down? I'm trying to eat my dinner, and you're ruining it!"

Penny's face paled. "He's trying to scare you," Marian groaned, muttering "dickhead" under her breath for him to hear. "Look, Pen, if any of them wanted to hurt you, they'd have to go through me," she explained. "Which for them is physically impossible because I'm just too damn special."

"Marian, shut up!" a voice grumbled loudly. Marian's eyes widened; Kol had woken up. "Or I'll kill you myself."

The four spent the rest of their time talking about all things supernatural, and after a while they'd all been picked up and taken home, or in Hannah's case, taken to Jack's.

No matter how hard she tried, Marian found that she couldn't get to sleep. Her mind was far too busy with thoughts and memories and things to try tomorrow that it wouldn't shut down. She constantly had a new idea or a tune of a song stuck in her head and she couldn't get it out.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed the warm covers off her body and let her feet touch the cold floor. She tip-toed towards her door, gently pulling it open and walking down the hallway towards her father's room.

She hesitated as she reached his door; maybe she should go to Rebekah instead. Her aunt was awfully good at helping her get to sleep. She supposed it was because Rebekah was so full of care. Perhaps she thought of Marian as a daughter just as Marian thought of her as a mother.

"Dad?" Marian whispered, stepping into his room. She heard a grumble come from him as she stepped closer. "Are you awake?"

"Go to sleep, Marian," Kol groaned, turning onto his side so his back faced her. She groaned.

"I can't," she said, throwing her head back into her pillow.

"Then count sheep or something," he huffed. Marian rolled her eyes, walking over to the other side of his bed and lying next to him. "I didn't mean you could do it here."

"I don't care."

She closed her eyes, willing her mind to clear and let her sleep. She felt Kol shift, gently kissing her on her forehead as he wrapped an arm around her.

"Good night, Marian," he breathed.

"Love you, Dad," she said.

"I love you too."

...

The rest of the week had moved far too quickly for her liking, and in an instant she found herself getting ready for her son's funeral. Rebekah had found her a beautiful dress to wear and had called Marian during the afternoon to tell the hairdresser exactly how to style the girl's hair and do her makeup—natural but effective.

Marian had tried her best not to cry during the funeral, but no matter how hard she tried, she failed. Kol had sat beside her, holding her hand tightly the whole time while Andrea was on her other side, and yet she still felt so alone.

Marian was distraught. Everyone she loved was leaving her. Carrie had been killed. Rebekah and Klaus were still in Mystic Falls dealing with something they refused to tell her about, Elijah had left for some place in Europe, and she'd told Ambrose to leave.

Ambrose. She had no idea how to feel about him. All she knew was that no matter how hurt she was that he hadn't told her sooner about Henri, she missed him. Some nights, she thought about what he'd tried to tell her; that he was going to tell her but then Finn had interfered. It made her feel guilty. But this was her child, and she'd rather have known than not know at all.

Marian and Kol stayed together after the funeral ceremony and followed behind Andrea and the rest of Henri's extended family to go to the burial service, where Henri's spirit would rest.

And all Marian could think about was that no matter how much she wished she could, she could not bring him back.

Eventually, Andrea, Kol, Marian, and a few others were the only ones left. While no one was watching, Andrea muttered a spell that brought fertility to the ground around his grave. A few flowers bloomed: gladiolus flowers, carnations, and Marian's favourite, dendrobiums.

"Come on, darling. We should go," said Kol softly, placing a hand on her lower back to guide her away.

"Do you mind if I have just a few minutes?" she asked him.

Kol was hesitant to leave her alone. What Henri had told him had made him even more worried about her mental state than he previously would've been. He nodded anyway, knowing that he could still keep an eye on her from a distance. "I'll be right over there," he told her, pointing towards a large tree where Andrea was standing.

"Okay," Marian whispered, gulping and turning back to the grave.

She waited a few moments for Kol to move away before she approached the gravestone, placing a hand on it and sniffling.

"You always were the most dramatic of your siblings." She huffed out a laugh. "And the cheekiest."

"And I hate you for leaving me."

She sighed. "But wherever you are, I hope you're happy." Henri had been born without magic, and with his father being Catholic, he'd been brought up believing in both the Other Side and heaven.

"And don't worry about me. I'll be fine eventually." She thought for a second. "Unless something even more drastic happens, which is pretty likely given my luck this time around."

She felt her phone buzz in her hand. Looking down at it, she saw that Damon was calling her. Marian rolled her eyes. "God, he's such an asshole," she muttered, declining the call. Her gaze hovered on the lockscreen wallpaper of her phone before she looked away from her phone. It was a photo of the sunset from the top of Klaus' home. She and Ambrose would go up there and talk for hours. She'd even once accidentally fallen asleep up there, and yet still woken up in her own bed.

"I wonder what you would've thought of him," she said out loud to Henri. "You probably would've hated him because he wasn't your dad."

She felt the urge to call him and tell him that she was sorry. She felt like she'd overreacted; she'd been so overwhelmed and taken it out on him. He really hadn't had much time to tell her. Everything had happened so fast.

Her finger had pressed on his contact and dialled his number before she could stop herself.

It rang once. Twice. Three times. Still, he hadn't picked up. The longer she waited, the stupider she felt. Did she seem desperate? Did he hate her? What would he say to her? She didn't know whether she wanted him to pick up or not. Would she leave him a message, or hang up as soon as it went to his voicemail?

Then:

"Annie?"

She felt her eyes well up with tears again, and she hated it.

"Hey," she breathed. She awkwardly pulled on the cardigan she'd had draped over her arm, the night air cold on her skin.

"Are you okay?"

Her lip quivered. Her breaths became shaky.

"No," she admitted. She started to cry. "I'm not. I'm just..." She tried hard to articulate how she was feeling. "I'm sorry," she blurted, beginning to sob. "I'm so sorry."

"Annie—"

"I didn't want you to go. I told you to leave but I didn't mean it. I lied. And I need you but you're not here, and I don't know what to do. My son's gone and I need... I wish you were here."

"Annie, turn around."

She frowned but did as he'd said, almost dropping when she saw Ambrose standing between her and the tree her father was waiting under. She ran as quickly as she could to him, not caring that she looked like a mess, and wrapped her arms tightly around him.

"It's okay," he said, placing his hand on the back of her head as she buried her face in his chest.

"How are you here?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"Klaus called," he replied. He felt her nod, then hug him tighter.

"Please don't leave me," she whispered.

"I'm here," Ambrose told her.

They ignored Marian's phone as Damon tried to call her a second time, and again when she received a stream of messages from him. Because right then, in that moment, Marian felt like she actually would be okay eventually. And she didn't want anything to take that feeling away from her.

She wouldn't see Damon's texts until the next day when all of Mystic Falls was in a panic.

Call me back. Elena's in transition.