Chapter One. The Mercury-Venus Conjunction
Finally a familiar feeling. Luke didn't take me over completely.
-Kai Parker.
Luke Parker walked across campus, deliberately not paying attention to where he was going, letting only the sense of his siblings's aura guide him. His left hand was in his pocket, holding onto his phone.
It wasn't until he saw the tears running down Liv's cheeks as their father forced the Merge on them that Luke realized what he somehow always knew… She was right. If they merged, Luke would win.
He knew his twin better better than she knew herself. Liv was selfish, and hot-headed, and had a violent streak. He would make a far better leader to the coven than she ever would.
And still, Luke could not live in a world where his sister died at his hands.
So he made up his mind to take a third option, a mad idea that just might work and save the lives of not just one but two of his sisters, and maybe himself as well.
The rules of the Merge had existed for millennia. Magic harnessed from a celestial event – tonight was the Mercury Venus conjunction. A set of twenty-two year old twins from their bloodline. Luke was a twin. So was Kai. They shared the same blood. They had the same parents.
And, strangely enough, they were the same age.
If you searched hard enough, you could find the loophole in every spell.
Luke reached a crossroad. He could sense them more clearly. They were near. Jo and Kai. He took his phone out of his pocket, and typed out Ian's number without checking his contacts.
He hesitated.
Liv thought that she was the only one in love, the only one who had something to live for, to fight for. But just because Luke had told her that the coven came first before everything else didn't mean that it was easy for him either.
That he didn't have someone to lose.
Luke pressed the Dial button.
He only wanted to leave a message – just in case, it didn't work… or in case, he lost – but Ian answered on the first ring. The two-minute call turned into ten minutes of goodbyes, I wish I could explains, I'm sorrys.
In the middle of the call, a wavefront of energy crashed into him. The earth shook as the power of the Conjunction ripped through the sky and come crashing onto the earth like lightning to a rod.
Luke switched off his phone and started running. But he already knew that it was too late.
He turned around a corner and he was in the field.
The ball of light and magic blazed so bright he could barely make out the two figures in the middle. He tried, futilely to shoot a stun spell towards them, to stop them, but it only rebounded, almost hitting him. He could hear their voices chanting in his very bones and wave upon wave of power kept slamming into him.
"Jo! Kai! Stop!"
It was useless. He watched, powerless as the magic reached its crescendo and lightning shot up from the ground back into the celestial event that fuelled the spell. Then the ball vanished, leaving behind two frozen figures, locked together. A breath passed. Then the air seemed to sigh and they fell apart like columns, crashing into the ground.
Luke ran to his sister and cradled her head in his arms. He imagined this was how she had cradled him when he was a baby, when his eighteen year old sister had had to play the role of their parents – parents who were too caught up in their own importance and ambition to see their second set of twins as anything more than a means of solidifying their dynasty.
Luke imagined this was how Jo had held him and Liv when she was hiding them from a brother who had already dipped his hands in the blood of four of his siblings.
"Jo, wake up. Please, wake up," he whispered to her, stroking her hair gently. She had saved him and Liv when they were four, literally given up her spleen to keep them alive.
No matter what Liv felt, this wasn't fair.
"Oh my god, Jo," Luke cried.
Ian. Tyler. Heck even, Alaric Saltzman. The Salvatores. Elena Gilbert. Luke, Liv and Jo had let them in. They had got too close. And they had forgotten the most important rule.
The coven always came first.
And now, because Luke couldn't hang up the phone on his boyfriend, his sister was dying, and a mad man would lead their people into the abyss.
And his four dead siblings had died in vain.
A dark figure blurred into the scene and Luke was looking up into Damon Salvatore's face.
Damon stared at Jo with something almost like fear in his face. "Alaric is going to kill me," he muttered.
Luke was too mentally exhausted to give the vampire an aneurysm.
"You let Kai out, didn't you?" he said through gritted teeth.
"I had to-"
"Shut up, Damon."
"Watch it, witch…"
"Witch what?" Luke snapped, and he could feel his rage start kindling. "Witch monkey? That's what my family is to you, isn't it? Do you have any idea what you've just-" He would have said more but at that moment, a sharp gasp pierced the air.
Instinctively, Luke's eyes went across the glade to the prone figure that was lying on his back. It took a few seconds for him to register that the body in his arms was moving.
He stared down in shock.
Jo's blue eyes stared up at him.
"Jo?" he whispered, almost scared. He put a hand on her cheek. "Jo?"
Jo blinked at him. Once. Twice. Then she sat up, slowly, still staring at him.
Luke and Damon stared back.
"Luke?" she whispered. "What happened?"
He shook his head, barely able to believe it. Once again, his eyes cut across to the other figure on the field. Still down.
Forever down now.
Damon was already there, his hand on Kai's neck. "He's dead!" he shouted, his voice as unbelieving as Luke felt.
Jo laughed. It was a shocked, gasping sound that ended in a sob.
"I won. I actually won."
Then she threw her arms around her younger brother – her only brother now.
And that was when it sunk in. Luke crowed with laughter, hugging her so tightly that they almost tipped over. Jo had won. Of course, she had won. How could he have ever doubted her?
It was only two decades of his father insisting that Jo could never win against Kai. It was only two weeks of watching her try to control the magic she was born with and fail, while Kai beat her at every turn with stolen magic.
In the end, the Merge – not Joshua Parker's latent contempt for his first daughter, not Luke's scepticism, not even Liv's stubborn hope – had proven who the stronger twin was.
Jo was still smiling when she got to her feet. She held out her hand to Luke and he laughed as he let her pull him up.
They looked at each other and hugged, laughing again. Arms around each other, they walked out of the field, Damon tagging behind them and saying something about Alaric now being a First Lady and starting a betting pool on future Mystical Twin Merge outcomes.
Jo pulled up short when they reached Kai's body. His eyes were open, staring up at the skies.
She knelt beside it. "Goodbye, Malachi." Gently, she closed his eyes.
Luke stared at his brother – his dead brother. Malachi Parker had been the monster under his bed for his entire childhood and most of his adult life.
Now he just looked like… a kid, really. He didn't even really look as old as Luke. The lean frame in the dirty hoodie looked harmless… ordinary. In his death, Malachi Parker looked peaceful.
Jo kept staring, and she cocked her head a little and swivelled at Damon. "Take off his head."
Damon, who had still been rambling about his GTM (Gemini Twin Merge) betting pool, cut himself off and stared at her.
Luke gaped at her. "What? Why?"
Jo shrugged. "You know how in horror stories, the killer is never really dead unless it's a head-shot or a decapitation. I want to be sure."
Luke swallowed. "He's dead, Jo. He lost. He can't come back even if there was an Other Side. It doesn't work that way."
"Chopping off your dead brother's head? That's dark, even for me," Damon muttered.
Jo sighed, rolling her head on her neck in a gesture that was eerily familiar… "There was a very good chance that I would have died this night because of your selfishness, Damon. I think this is the least you can do for me."
Damon glared. She glared back, her eyes narrowing. Then the vampire shrugged. "Whatever," he muttered and with one swift motion, Kai's head went rolling across the glade.
Jo watched it with grim satisfaction.
"Now, I have to clean up this mess," the vampire muttered, going after it. "So much for getting home quickly to my hot girlfriend."
Jo reached up a hand. It took Luke a while to realize that she was asking him to help her up. After some hesitation, he stretched out his hand and pulled her to her feet.
She smiled at him. "Any plans for tonight?"
Luke shook his head, numbly. There was Ian, but now… Now, he just wanted to be near his sister.
Who he had almost lost but by some miracle, she had saved herself.
Hadn't she?
"Want to watch while I break the good news to Joshua Parker? Turns out weak little Sissy is his new boss." She laughed, her eyes glinting.
Luke laughed back, uncertainly. Linking arms again, the Parker siblings walked out of the glade together.
"One will absorb traits from the other. Both of your souls will unite into a new being."
Joshua's words nagged at Luke. A memory struck Luke then. A faint memory, one of the few he had of his childhood - most of which he had lost after the traumatic events of 1994. But this one had stuck. His brothers, Joey and Kai, playing some stupid video game. And Kai crowing at the end over Joey, smirking about winning.
"Some win and some lose. But not me, I always win."
The memory rattled in his head, intertwining with his father's words to form a message Luke was not ready to hear. So he pushed them out and tightened his grip around his sister, Josette Parker, now Dr. Jo Laughlin, the new leader of the Gemini Coven.
Kai had been wrong. He had lost. Jo had won. The nightmare that started in 1994 was finally over.
It had to be.
Next: Chapter 2, Happy Birthday, Bonnie Bennett
A/N: A new story! In celebration for surviving my finals! I am so glad that it's over! OK, some tumblr folks may remember this one. This story all started with one what-if, "What if Jo had won the Merge?" How would that have affected the story if everything else in canon remained the same? So it got me thinking about Gemini magic, and Joshua Parker's words about merging personalities, and how Luke affecting Kai's sociopathy had given him a form of victory, and Kai's cryptic words that he always won... You can probably guess where this story is going, right? And if you can't, all the better. Although I will spoil you about one thing - the story starts with Kai appearing to "die"- but this isn't the last we see of our not-so-friendly neighborhood sociopath.
This is half-way written so updates will be regular for a while, then not-so regular. ! I'm so sorry but I'm juggling this and 4 other BK work-in-progress stories. But the good news is that... Finals are over! LOL! I have a few weeks to laze around and I intend to devote them to writing. So expect more regular updates from all my fics this winter. (And yes, Original Sin will finally be posted in its entirety!) Thanks in advance for reading and reviewing. Let me know what you think and feel free to ask as many questions as you like. :)