A/N: I know, I know, I shouldn't be posting another story, but I couldn't help it with this one. For our other readers, I've been struggling with clinical depression and anxiety and the general suckitude of high school. Specifically our other Originals and Titanic story, we are working on those and will continue them.
So, normally we are co-authors (we go by Goldie and Sharpie), but this story is just mine (Goldie's). It's a concept I've been wanting to entertain for a long while now: a Mikaelson sister.
I labelled this an Originals fic, even though it'll overlap some with The Vampire Diaries, but mostly out of necessity, and it will eventually shift over to New Orleans. My character, Aria Mikaelson, is the broken, insane, eternally thirteen-year-old twin of the late Henrik Mikaelson, and without much further ado, here's the first chapter! Please read, review, and enjoy! Thanks so much :).
Warnings: Character death (Henrik), grief, suicidal thoughts/actions.
P.S. Face claim of Aria is India Eisley with edits I made on preview, such as making her hair and eyes black. Oh, and KOL MIKAELSON WILL NOT DIE. REPEAT: KOL MIKAELSON WILL NOT DIE IN THAT STUPID-ASS, RIDICULOUS STORYLINE. That is all.
Chapter 1: Yin Without Yang
1001 A.D.
Sometimes, you can pinpoint the exact moment when your world falls apart beneath your feet. The exact moment when you can feel your heart splitting apart deep in your chest. When you know it'll never heal, and when you know . . . you don't want it to.
My moment was when my twin brother died. My heart broke, my soul shattered, and my mind snapped.
I don't remember much from that day. Niklaus stumbled forward, shouting for my mother, and when I saw a mangled Henrik in his arms . . . My pail of water slipped from my fingers and I dropped to my knees.
There was a harsh ringing in my ears, and blood roared in my head. I heard somebody screaming - a harsh, strangled series of shrieks, and it was only when my family's heads whirled in my direction that I realized it was coming from me. My chest heaved with the motions, and I couldn't budge my frozen muscles as Elijah ran for me, sweeping me up into his burly arms, attempting to shield me from the grotesque site.
It was as if I was watching from outside my body, past the village, as I struggled against my brother like a rabid animal. I punched him, elbowed, kicked, even clamped my teeth into onto his nose when the opportunity allowed for it. He loosed a roar of pain, and I broke free of his hold, running for my twin even though I couldn't feel my legs.
Distantly, I knew that I was still screaming. Howls of wind whipped through the trees, weaving its way through the weakening branches. From far away, I heard the booms of thunder echoing above me, and rain pattered all around us.
My dress ripped at the knees and blood bubbled up from the scrapes as I skidded to my twin's side. There was no other way to put it. He was . . . dead. His once so lively brown eyes were glazed over, gazing into nothingness. I hovered my fingers over the long, brutal gashes in his torso, surrounded by mud and drying blood. My twin. Not merely a pair of siblings, but one entire person, our souls sewn together into an unbreakable bond.
"H-Henrik . . ."
That was the precise moment where I was unequivocally destroyed. Gripping handfuls of the oh-so-familiar fabric of his tunic, I tilted my head to the gray, tumultuous sky and poured all of my shock, grief, rage, and sorrow into one ear-shattering wail, and the surrounding world wailed with me.
Leaning forward, I gripped the sides of my twin's ashen face and pressed my forehead to his, crying out at the icy stillness. It was a gesture our family recognized well, where we joined temples, content with the other's physical closeness. We were together in our mother's womb, and sometimes, we needed to shut out the world to remain so again.
But now, our auras no longer mingled as one. He was empty. Barren, and empty. The mangled corpse before me was no longer my brother. I hardly noticed the moisture spilling past my eyelids onto his once joyful features. No longer would he smile, or laugh, or tease me, or say he loved me . . .
"Calm her down," I heard one of my family members insist behind me. "Someone needs to calm her down, before she kills us all!" It had to be my father. I could recognize his gruff voice anywhere, and nobody else would be so cruel as my life crumbled into a pile of ash and pitiful rubble.
Nobody else moved, and my father must've decided to take the initiative, because something hard and blunt slammed into the back of my skull, sending me into a welcoming spiral of blackness.
...
The next time I awoke, I was terribly cold. Still groggy with sleep, I recognized my bed I shared with my sister beneath me, and the heavy weight of my thick, fur blankets. I was in my bedroom that I'd slept in with Bekah and Henrik. Even with three of those spreads of fabric over me, I still shivered with uncontrollable fervor. "She's awake, Mother," a soft voice murmured somewhere besides me. Rebekah, I realized as my eyelids fluttered open, then closed again. "But her fever has not yet broken."
"Son," a voice called out, who sounded like my mother. "Bring me the water basin. Your little sister is conscious, but the fever is still strong in her." There was the sound of a flurry of movement, and a new voice entered the room.
"Will she be all right, Mother?" Deep, soothing voice: Elijah. "Has the grief contributed to her ailments? She has never been so sick before."
Was I sick? Someone - my mother, I assumed - pressed an icy cloth to my forehead and I whimpered in protest. No, no, I wanted to shout at her, I'm so cold! "It is not only the emotional side of it. Aria is a powerful witch, and Henrik was a powerful young warlock. With their underlying deep connection, they relied on each other's sources of magic to thrive. Aria has now been stripped of that, and her body is not reacting well."
There was a long pause where only my own heavy breathing pierced the silence, and another one of my brothers came in. "I'm a warlock too, Mother." Kol, then. "Perhaps my presence would help ease her magical core?" She must have nodded, because my mattress lowered above my head and a large hand enveloped my small, dainty one. "I am here, Ri." Henrik and Kol were the only two who could get away with calling me that.
Opening my eyes again, I started once I noticed a familiar figure standing behind both women and my second eldest brother. My twin! "Henrik," I murmured, reaching for him, not noticing the concerned glances my mother, sister, and Elijah exchanged. "Henrik, why are you standing so far away? Come closer . . ."
Mother gently pushed my arm back down, and blinking once, Henrik disappeared. The haze of fever dissipated any sense of logic or coherent thoughts from my mind, and instead, I frowned in confusion. Why did he leave? "Rest, my dear child," my mother hummed into my ear, and I listened to her, embracing the comfort of slumber.
...
After an immeasurable period of time, I shot up, drenched in sweat. I panted and tugged aimlessly at my ruined dress to remove it from my sticky, sweltering skin. A slightly larger, but no less delicate hand cupped my own and I looked up into my older sister of five years' wide, ocean-blue eyes. My other hand was still being held by Kol. "How are you feeling?" my sister asked kindly.
My head pounded like nothing else, and I felt sick to my stomach. My body was as drained and exhausted as my mind. Still, a cloud of sickness dominated my thoughts. Kol and Rebekah were with me, but as much as I loved them, I wanted my twin. "W-Where is Henrik?"
A thick sheen of moisture coated Bekah's beautiful eyes, and I tilted my head to the side in bewilderment. "Do not cry, sweet sister," I said softly, prying my shaky, weak hand from her grip to rest it against her cheek. "All is well. I have been sick before, and I will be sick again. I have not died yet, unless I haven't noticed . . . Where is Henrik?" Henrik and I would invariably end up sick along with the other, since we were so inseparable.
Tears spilled down Rebekah's cheeks, and I dropped my hand. She ducked her head away as her shoulders shook with uncontrollable sobs. ". . . Bekah?"
Kol must've understood my fragile mental state more than her. "Henrik isn't here right now, baby sister," he whispered into my ear, his breath hot against my sweaty face. "Rest now, and everything will be clear again." With much effort, I shifted my gaze between the two of them before Kol pushed me down back onto my back with uncharacteristic tenderness. "Sleep well, Ri." I obeyed him without a single protest, which was beyond rare for me, the wild and carefree Mikaelson twin.
...
It was a fitful, restless slumber. When I awoke again, I didn't entirely break into the land of the living, but every part of my body ached and throbbed. Gasping in painful breaths, I thrashed my limbs about in a failed effort to relieve the agony residing in my body. "Mother, come quick!" This was a new voice. Male - higher than Elijah's, lower than Kol's. A brief glimpse displayed shoulder-length wavy blond locks, but my mind was too muddled and distorted to recognize Niklaus. "She's in pain, and her fever is higher than ever!"
From a faraway land, I could feel somebody still holding my hand. Who it was, though, I could not remember. My throat tightened, and I managed to tilt my head over the bed as I emptied the contents of my stomach. Slipping into a bout of sobs, I coughed up mouthfuls of saliva, bile, and another liquid that tasted saltier and more metallic than the others. "Damn it all to hell!" the person holding my hand shouted. "Mother, she's coughing blood!"
"Henrik," I moaned, as I continued to cough up the aforementioned blood, the crimson liquid leaking down from my lips onto the front of my nightgown somebody must've changed me into at some point. "Henrik, where are you, I need you!" Blindly, I whipped my free hand about, frantic to grasp onto him. "Henrik, please!" I was growing hysterical.
The grip on my hand tightened, and I barely noticed a woman I assumed to be my mother muttering words in a language I could not understand. "Henrik!" I screeched at the top of my lungs, agony shooting through my chest as I did so. "I need you!"
"I am here, sister, I am here." Almost immediately, I relaxed into a placid state of calm, the pain no longer so difficult to bear when my twin was here. "Fret no longer, I am here beside you." My eyes fluttered open for a brief moment, and Henrik's voice strained in something akin to panic. "No, no, Ri, keep your eyes shut. All you need to know is that I am here with you."
"Kol -" a voice echoed somewhere to the side of me, objecting. Kol? Where was Kol? Other than Henrik, he was the brother I was closest to, by a slim margin. I did not like to pick favorites. "This is wrong. You cannot trick her like this -"
"Shut it, Bekah!" Henrik snapped at our elder sister. That was strange. Henrik was always kind and sweet in comparison to my crassness. He never spoke to her in such a disrespectful manner. "I'm bloody helping her!"
"Don't speak to her like that," the first voice I heard when I woke up growled to my twin.
"You can shut it too, Nik!" That was even more strange. Henrik adored Nik. He worshipped the ground he walked on.
If I had my wits about me, I would have understood instantly. But, alas, in my muddled confusion, I only wanted Henrik.
"Henrik," I whimpered, my heart rate slowing as his forehead connected with mine. Yes, this had to be my twin. It was a gesture used by only us. "You're here with me?"
"Yes, sister, I am here," he murmured into my sweaty hairline. "Go back to sleep, now. I will be here when you awaken, and with any luck, you will be feeling much better."
"I will, Henrik . . ." Once again, I drifted off. This time, it was a peaceful sleep.
...
When I awoke again, much later, I was much clearer in the head. Or so I thought. Groaning, I lifted myself into a sitting position, tucking my ebony curls of hair behind my ears. Nobody was with me. They must have assumed I was still sleeping, and were eating while they could.
"Ri!" I jumped, but my face broke apart into a wide smile as I saw the boy before me. Wavy black hair, the same shade of mine, fell to his shoulders, and his almost black eyes twinkled with mischief. "You've finally awoken!" He danced to the square-shaped hole in my wall that acted as a window, with makeshift curtains. "Come, sister. Let's go play."
"What are you going on about now, Henrik?" I asked, amused, but still swinging my legs over the bed and allowing my bare feet to come into contact with the dirty floor. "I thought I was the one meant to come up with reckless and foolhardy schemes destined to throw us into danger."
For a long moment, he stared deep into my eyes, an unfathomable look crossing his youthful features. "You are, Ri. You are doing this. This is you."
He sounded positively creepy when he said that. I crossed my arms, utterly nonplussed. "What are you talking about?"
The weird expression faded as quickly as it arrived, and the corners of his lips tweaked up into a bright smile. "Never you mind, sister. Follow me!" Without further ado, he hurled himself out of my window, as we'd both done so many times before. I didn't give it a second's thought of further consideration before mimicking him.
I gasped as the freezing night air came into contact with my thin, worn-out nightgown and my naked arms. It was so, so cold. Yet, Henrik paid no mind to the weather. It didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. Since I refused to be any less courageous than my twin, I followed him on swift, nimble feet. "Slow down, you buffoon!"
If it were possible, he only lengthened his stride. "I cannot, Ri! They will soon notice you are gone, and you will be caught!"
Pushing my legs harder and faster, I finally matched his pace, twigs and sticks slicing up my feet and leaving them muddy and bloodied. "Don't you mean we will be caught, brother?"
Henrik looked at me out of the corner of his eye. "No, I don't." And he only continued on, leaving me to scrounge up more strength and stamina to follow close behind.
"Where are we going?" I panted, icy air sucking into my lungs and making them hurt.
"To the river!" he cried joyfully. The river was one of our favorite places to spend time together - in the summer, mostly, when we could swim and splash around like the children we were. In the other seasons, though, it was nice to lounge on the riverbank and watch the water lap at the shore, to have a moment or two of quiet from the rest of our hectic family.
Tripping over a particularly hidden tree root, I fell forward and rolled a few times down a small, mossy ravine before sprawling onto my hands and knees right in front of the river. I decided to be optimistic, even when my palms and kneecaps smarted like nothing else. "Well, I got here faster than you!"
It was the truth. He skidded next to me only a second or two later, but still, I arrived first. With one of his wolfish grins that was a perfect reflection of mine, he bellowed, "Watch this!" and leapt straight into the air, tucking his knees into his chest and plummeting through the river's rippling surface.
"What the hell is the matter with you?" I shouted as his head bobbed up again. Had we switched roles entirely? He was the good twin, and I was the bad twin! "Have you lost your damn mind? Winter is upon us in a measure of two moons!"
Again, he fixed me with one of those eerie, knowing stares. That, and the combination of the moonlight pouring in between the tree branches, I was almost a little afraid. Of what, I didn't know. But never him. Never my twin. "You have lost your mind, Ri. This is your idea."
I recoiled in on myself, deeply confused. "What the hell are you going on about now? You've all but dragged me here with you!"
Henrik's countenance cleared up once more and he smiled, opening his arms up wide in a typical Mikaelson gesture. "Whatever you say, Ri. Come on in! The water's freezing this time of year, but that's half the fun of it!" I shifted my weight from foot to foot, already shivering from my lack of proper covering and the breeze whistling through the trees. He grinned even wider. "I dare you!"
He knew perfectly well, as well as the rest of my siblings, I could never turn down a dare. Especially not from him. So, without further ado, I propelled myself forward and dove into the dark waves.
Cold was the understatement of the century. My limbs tensed in shock as the freezing temperature set in, and I slammed into the graveled bottom of the river, my already numb fingers scraping against the pebbles. I expected Henrik to help pull me to the surface, as he always did, but he didn't this time.
The current was also stronger than I expected. No sooner than I burst through the surface was I yanked back under again and forced downstream. Only a well-placed clump of grass that I knit my fingers into stopped me from going any further, and I greedily gulped in air once I arose above the surface once more. To my utter surprise, Henrik was standing on the shore, his clothes as dry as they were a minute ago, as if he hadn't been touched by a single droplet of water. "What are you doing?" My voice shook with the cold and slight fear.
Henrik walked over to me and knelt where I struggled to stay afloat, making no moves to assist my endeavors. "Why would you make me do this?" I all but yelled in his face. "This is a ridiculous idea! You might've damned me to death, brother!"
He pressed his hand over mine, and my heart skipped a beat when I realized I couldn't feel a damn thing. It was as if he wasn't even there. "No, sister. You have damned yourself to death. You want to die."
Now he'd truly began his descent into madness. "You bloody well know that's not true!" I cried, the clump of grass starting to rip free of the dirt, my legs lifting behind me in response to the hungry current. "Why would I want to die? That means I would leave you, and you're right here!"
He smiled - a sad, melancholy little smile. As if he pitied me. "Oh, Ri. I died. Don't you remember? I went with Nik to see the wolves, and they slaughtered me. He brought my body back."
I shrieked as an influx of unwanted memories invaded my mind. "No, no, that's not true! You're lying! Why would you lie to me?" I half-sobbed, half-screamed. "We tell each other everything; there are no secrets between us!"
Henrik loosed a deep sigh, and slowly shook his head. "No, there weren't any secrets between us. But I'm dead, Ri. I'm not really here at all. You're imagining me because you can't cope with the grief." My mouth opened and closed, but my retort caught in my throat. "I'm dead, and you do not want to live without me. I did not lead you to the river. You came here by yourself. You want to die. You just thought it would be easier to die with me by your side, even if I'm not really here."
I choked on my flow of tears as the grass truly started to shred beneath my hand, and I began to drift away from the shore. "No, no, Henrik, please, help me!" Making a blind grab for his hand, I collapsed back into the water when he did not reach me halfway, as he would've done any other time. "Henrik, don't leave me! Save me!"
Henrik stood up and his beautiful brown eyes filled to the brim with tears. "I'm sorry, Ri. But I cannot save you when you do not want to be saved. Goodbye, sister." And with that, he strolled away, before ultimately disappearing into a wisp of a shadow. He was gone. Yet, he was never here to begin with.
The grass finally pulled free of the dirt, and I released my loudest scream yet as I shot downstream, nothing to act as a barrier now. When all fight in my body left me, I murmured, "I'm sorry, Henrik. Forgive me," before drifting down below the surface, allowing the darkness to engulf me.
I wasn't the same person after that. I was barely half of one, and not the good half, at that. I should have died that day, along with my dear twin. If I had, perhaps, then I wouldn't have been swept up in my family's long reign of terror and violence. Long live the Mikaelsons . . .
A/N: So, what'd you think? Like it, love it, hate it? Let me know in the comments! Who do you think will save Aria from drowning, and how will she end up becoming a vampire along with the rest of her siblings?
