WAR OF HEARTS • hayley marshall

34 | NOT TO MY FACE

"Remind me again, why exactly am I being roped into this latest project of yours, Elijah?" Khalia asked, her nose wrinkling in distaste as she eyed the hardware store her dark haired brother just pulled up in front of. Having been pulled out of bed by her least favourite brother for the second morning in a row, did not put the Demon Mikaelson in a good mood. In fact, it left her with a fixed glare on her face as they rode through the streets of New Orleans.

"Think of it as building your people skills." The oldest Original quipped with a smirk before getting out of his expensive car that drew several gazes from the humans around them. Letting out a sound of indignance, Khalia followed suit.

"I don't give a fuck about my people skills and I know you don't either. Which begs the question of why you didn't just compel a human to do it? Would have spared us a whole lot of trouble." Khalia pointed out, ignoring the humans curious and awe struck looks as the sibling duo walked to the enterance of the store. She had no patience for them when she was stone cold sober - which was definitely Elijah's fault. He barely gave her time to comb her hair after waking her up.

She was tempted to just ignore his offer, but the thought of breaking something down and building something new from the ruins was just to tempting. And Elijah, the fucker, he knows it. Knows how his sister loves the physical labour part of redecorating. It was something that not many knew about the Demon Original, but her siblings defenitely knows.

So, for all her complaining about having to do as she was told, Elijah could see the unrestrained excitement in her eyes at the thought of working with her hands. The last time she did something like this, was in Mystic Falls. After the Original family was awakened in Mystic falls, Khalia was more than a little angry with her Hybrid brother - she always was after being awakened - and his newly built house was caught in the crossfire as she kicked his ass up and down,

That was how Khalia ended up fixing everything she destroyed, herself.

The two vampires definitely looked out of place. Elijah, with his thousands of dollars suits. Khalia, with her dark glare and thigh high stiletto leather boots.

"Right," Elijah started, taking an akward pause in the doorway of the hardware store, looking like the very defenition of uncomfortable. Khalia snorted in amusement as her eyes glanced over the rows of equipment. "What do you think we'll need?"

"The basics." The female Mikaelson shrugged before taking off in a direction, Elijah following dutifully behind her with a trolley.

"Which would be what, exactly?"

Khalia rolled her eyes. "Wood, nails, screws, hammers, drills, saws, ect."

Elijah hummed in acknowledgement as his sister began pulling down ietms from the shelves and throwing it into the trolley he grabbed. The male Original was content to just let his sister at it to her hearts desire, following behind her with the trolley.

He would never admit it out loud, but the whole reason he had come up with the idea to renovate the Compound, was to keep Khalia close. He worried about her. That she would fall into the dark abyss of her pain so deeply that she would never be able to get out of it and see the light ever again.  Elijah knows of his sister's love for redecorating and decided to exploit it. The slightly older vampire knew that Hayley wasn't an option for distracting his oldest sister right now and thus had to resort to using other tactics.