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Summary: In the middle of winter, just minutes after my twin sister, I was reborn into a world I knew everything about and into a family I would fail to save. [Self-Insert/OC-Insert as Freya's twin.]

Have fun.

Edited on the 25th of March 2017. I have added an extra scene at the end of this chapter.

The Hanging Tree

Chapter 2

The Outlander

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Where She Awoke To Another Life

"To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

I had been catholic once.

Now I wasn't so sure anymore.

I had once been born to a woman who had decided to have a child after reaching the prime of her career. No father there, only the seeds of an unknown man that lived somewhere in Germany.

The warmth of a father was something I had never even hoped to receive.

I had once been raised by my aging mother to be a bratty and spoiled child. The world had laid at my feet and I had a bright future before me in a society more accepting than most.

Everything was different now. Accepting? What a joke.

I had once been an only child.

She was here now and I knew what I had missed once upon a time. My only light in this new and frightening situation was one of the two things I did not have before.

A sibling and a father.

I had once been Julia Bergemann, a teenage girl living in Germany.

That girl did not exist anymore. She had died of cancer, resenting the woman who had been her mother for making her already bad situation worse. Despite knowing that she had done nothing to deserve the honor, that girl had still hoped to be granted entrance into heaven.

But there was no heaven and either this was hell or the Christians and all the other religions that believed into those fucking things had it all wrong.

And I was the living prove of that. I who had once died as Julia Bergemann and then proceeded to enter the so called reincarnation cycle as Eira Mikaelson.

What a strange name that was. Eira, I had never heard of it before and this only highlighted how far from home I truly was.

I did not realize it immediately, of course. My new body still too young and feeble to be even awake for more than an hour at a time, let alone to properly think about what had happened and where I was.

And even when I did try to at least listen to what was said around me—Watching or observing were not an option. My eyes blinder than they had ever been, plunging me into a situation more frightening than anything else.—I could not understand the words spoken. A language so different from anything I had ever heard that I considered myself lucky for being able to identify the names of the few people that constantly surrounded me.

The woman—My new mother as I would later realize.—was called Esther and the man whom I had thought to be her husband was named Mikael. There was also another human there, a child—My twin, my twin sister.—whom they had named Freya.

But those were things I realized after months of being in this new world. When the words spoken slowly and finally started to make sense to me and my almost blind eyes providentially cleared.

I heard, I saw and I understood.

Julia Bergemann had died of cancer and then been reborn as a tiny girl in what seemed like a thousand years in the past.

I had died and come back to life as Eira Mikaelson.

I was an infant, living in a time when child mortality was at its highest and the word equality had no meaning.

I was a murderer that had taken the place of a innocent child and was now forced to play its role.

And quite honestly, I was totally screwed.

I was about four months old when the truth of what had happened finally hit me like a car colliding with an ancient tree.

There was no escaping it. There was no stopping it. There was only the possibility of trying to salvage the broken pieces.

I never asked to be reborn. Never even considered the possibility of it.

I had died too early, tired and old in a way that only the truly ill could be.

Death had not been something I had feared. Alright, that was a lie. I had feared death and I still did, but at that time, when my body was writhing with an unimaginable pain, death seemed like the better option. I had welcomed oblivion because I had hoped that it would finally end my pain and believed that something akin to heaven was awaiting me in the afterlife.

Not this. Never this.

Not if it meant stealing the child of an innocent woman. I never expected that I would end up in such a situation. Completely unprepared, that's what I was.

And for a while, I had actually thought that I just might end up going mad. If I hadn't already, that is.

The one who actually managed to distract me enough and steer my mind away from many self-destructive thoughts was neither my new mother nor my new father, but the supposed older sibling I never expected to have.

Freya Mikaelson

A tiny blonde girl with eyes as blue as the sky. The presence that had been my companion for almost nine months. My twin sister.

She was the anchor I needed in this new world and I perhaps unfairly attached myself tightly to her, never planning to let go.

I found it easy to form a bond with my new father—There was no one I was trying to replace with him. No one whom I had once loved and hated in sometimes equal measures.—but it was harder when it came to Esther.

She was a lovely young woman, perhaps almost too young to be a mother. Maybe nineteen years old. But if there was one thing she did, then it was love her children unconditionally. Sometimes when she looked at us it seemed as if she couldn't believe that we were actually there, as if we were just a figment of her imagination.

And it was that look and unconditional love that made me grudgingly accept her.

(Later I would come to hate myself for that blind and naive acceptance.)

On some days, my new sister's presence, Esther's unconditional love an Mikael's complete devotion to his family actually managed to almost erase those horrible memories. Memories of pain and illness and more pain. Sometimes, even if just for a second, they made me forget about Julia Bergemann and allowed me to just be Eira.

And that, that alone was enough to make me love them.

It wasn't easy to accept that I had died, lost everything I had had—I did not think that I would ever truly accept it.—but after months and months had passed and the world around me finally started to make sense, I was eventually able to live my new life as Eira.

Day in day I learned to enjoy what I now had and perhaps let go of some of the things I would never have again.

Julia Bergemann was dead. Eira Mikaelson was alive.

I only hoped that this new life, this second chance, would have a better ending than my first one did.

And now, looking upon my twin sister who was playing with a small wooden horse father had carved for us, I prayed for the one thing I had never realized that I did not have; a future.

A future with my new family in a time that promised nothing good.

As if hearing my silent prayer, Freya turned towards me, her back leaning heavily against the wall opposite of me and the small horse in her right hand, and smiled a bright toothless smile.

We were only about eight months old. Sitting on our small bed inside our hut, not knowing any of the things the future had in store for us.

Not realizing the whole truth of my existence yet, I smiled back.

Freya's first word had been 'father'.

It was followed by my first word that quite surprisingly turned out to be 'mother'. Personally, I did not care about such trivial things, however, I had seen the way Esther looked at us when Freya called out to Mikael for the first time. Mother had been happy to hear her say something, but she had wished to be the one for whom her children called for with their first words.

Thus I decided to do her the honor and said after clapping my hands happily: ''Mother.''

She was ecstatic. Her lips turned upward into a bright smile and her eyes practically shined. Mother looked radiant and I was suddenly very glad that I had decided for that course of action.

Her happiness was infectious and my whole new family was smiling with her. Even the normally reserved Mikael had a curve to his lips.

I was in Esther's arms before I could even think about protesting, her arms squeezing me to her chest tightly and making it possible for me to notice something rather unexpected.

In a moment of outmost surprise my jaw dropped. A bump. There was a small bump where her normally flat stomach had been.

And while her weight could have just increased a little bit because she ate more than usually in the last few weeks, I knew without a doubt that this wasn't just her gaining weight.

Mother was pregnant.

How I hadn't noticed this earlier I did not know. More than once she had taken me and Freya to a stream near the village for a bath. We saw her naked then and I should have seen the changes in her body.

But I didn't and so I was left completely surprised now that I finally realized why my new parents had been behaving differently in the last few weeks.

I was going to be an elder sister.

''My sweet, sweet Eira. You have no idea how happy you have made your mother.'' She was twirling me around our hut, her body moving in circles and feet somehow managing to not stumble over her long dress.

I could see Mikael, standing at the sidelines with Freya in his arms and looking at us with a peaceful expression.

Giggles escaped my lips and Freya started to laugh with me. A slight breeze blew into the room through the open door and gently caressed my flushed cheeks. There was something else there as well.

Soft and protective and all around me.

I didn't know how, but a part of me reached out and grasped it lightly.

An infinite calm filled me as well as a happiness that certainly wasn't mine. Freya's bell-like giggles rang through the room.

Everything seemed to glow for a second and an unknown warmth filled my tiny body. From the outside a few leaves entered our hut and twirled in the air. There was another surge of warmth and then the connection was broken.

The whole moment felt surreal and otherworldly. I had never felt something like this before and knew that this certainly wasn't normal. Those thoughts were confirmed when my gaze settled on the woman who was holding me.

Mother's eyes shone even brighter as she regarded us twins with a knowing look.