Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter Text
The Bayou was quiet that night.
No rustling creatures. No distant howls. Only the whisper of moss swaying like ghosts between the branches, and the gentle hush of the wind tracing through memory.
Klaus hadn’t meant to come back here.
Not really.
Not after all this time.
But some dreams don’t let you go.
And this one—her—had carved its way into his chest like a thorned vine, impossible to ignore. He’d woken in the middle of the night in New Orleans, heart racing, the sound of her voice echoing with unnatural clarity in his skull.
“Niklaus…”
Not a scream. Not a plea. Just a whisper. Familiar. Soft. Alive.
He was halfway to the Bayou before he realized he’d even moved.
Now he stood at the edge of the old clearing where her grave used to be.
Used to be.
Because the headstone was gone.
In its place was a garden.
Wild. Overgrown. Blooming out of season. Violets in late winter. Roses with thorns longer than fingers. White camellias cupped like broken porcelain. Some part of him remembered planting it, long ago—blood on his hands, grief buried beneath his skin. A tribute. A vow.
But he had not made this.
This was something else.
A breath of air stirred beside him, too close to be wind. Klaus turned, muscles tense.
And saw her.
Barefoot in the garden.
Moonlight kissed the edge of her curls, caught the tremble in her fingers. She moved like something half-there—real in one moment, shimmering at the edges in the next. Her dress was pale and thin and not suited to the cold, but she didn’t shiver. Her eyes drifted over the flowers like they held secrets.
She didn’t look at him.
Not yet.
Klaus couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.
“Hayley,” he said, and the word cracked something in him open.
She paused.
Turned.
And met his gaze like a stranger seeing a ghost.
There was no recognition in her face. Only a quiet sort of curiosity. “You’re not supposed to be here,” she said gently.
Klaus swallowed hard, heart twisting.
“I could say the same.”
She smiled—soft, distant, unknowing.
And then she walked past him, into the thicket of silver-petaled trees, leaving silence and the scent of old magic in her wake.
Klaus stood alone in the garden that shouldn’t exist, listening to the sound of his own heartbeat breaking.
Dead doesn’t mean gone.
And gone doesn’t mean forgotten.
Chapter 2: Where the Flowers Grow Backwards
Chapter Text
It wasn’t a dream.
Klaus stood at the edge of the clearing long after the pale silhouette had disappeared into the trees, waiting for the spell to break. For logic to return. For his grief to reclaim its rightful place, heavy and hollow.
But the garden remained. Alive. Blooming. Impossible.
And in the soil—footprints.
Bare. Small. Fresh.
He crouched to touch them, pressing his palm to the cold earth. Still warm. Still real.
Hayley had always walked barefoot when she could. She used to say shoes were a leash, and she had no time for leashes.
Then how are you here, he thought, bound to a place like a prisoner?
A branch snapped behind him.
Klaus rose instantly, eyes blazing—ready for threat, beast, or witch.
But it was only a white flower. Falling upward.
He stared.
The rose that had just bloomed near his feet wilted in reverse, its petals curling back toward the bud, stem twisting to seal it shut. The entire garden seemed to pulse, humming faintly like a heartbeat underfoot.
Time here was wrong.
Or magic. Or both.
And it reeked of something old. Older than even him.
By dawn, he had answers. Or pieces of them.
Freya arrived in a flurry of annoyed footsteps and protective fury, muttering spells under her breath before she even stepped past the edge of the clearing.
“You called me at four in the morning,” she snapped, setting down her satchel. “Said Hayley was alive. Are you drunk, hallucinating, or—”
“She's in there,” Klaus said simply, eyes fixed on the garden. “Or something like her.”
Freya’s expression faltered.
He led her into the garden.
And as soon as they passed the invisible threshold, her breath caught.
“Gods,” she whispered. “This isn’t resurrection magic. This is tethering. Ancient druidic. Blood-soaked ritual work—this isn’t just necromancy, Nik. This place is a binding. A prison.”
“For who?”
“For her,” Freya said grimly. “And maybe… for you.”
They watched her again that night.
She came out just after sundown, stepping into the garden like it was her first time. Her eyes skimmed the white roses and bluebells, fingertips brushing petals as if trying to remember something lost.
“Every night,” Klaus said quietly. “She walks the same path. Never past the stones. Never toward the trees.”
“She’s caught in a loop,” Freya murmured. “A ghost with a heartbeat.”
As if hearing them, Hayley paused.
She turned. Eyes locking on Klaus through the fog.
She didn’t speak.
But her lips parted just slightly. And her brows creased.
Recognition? Pain?
Then she blinked. The moment vanished. She turned away and walked on.
Later, alone in his room above Rousseau’s, Klaus sat in the dark with an old sketchpad in his lap. He hadn’t drawn in years.
But now, his hands moved without thinking.
White roses.
Bare feet.
A garden that rewrote itself every night.
And a woman whose memory tasted like blood and salt and fire.