Hope stood up in her crib as healthy as could be. Her mouth grazed over the softness of a stuffed wolf she held and her eyes glanced around the room. The wind whistled like a bird just outside. Her health had considerably arose for the better since Abigail's visit, and for that, the Mikaelsons found Abigail could be trusted, despite her brothers' questionable behaviors. Hope used the rim of her crib as support as she danced on weak little legs around its perimeter looking for a way to get attention. The wind's whistle came in form of a hiss as her window sudden opened with a burst of wind. Her little glazed irises searched the window for a visitor, but there was no solid matter to follow the venomous noises.
Abigail stood in confusion among a golden, dewy forest she recognized greatly. "Back to admire your handiwork? Returning to the scene of the crime," Pecus' smooth voice declared from a distance. "It had to be done, you said so yourself, Beast," Abigail replied sharply. "You have the audacity to call one a beast when they seek to enrich their own lives when you do the exact same," Pecus replied. "You've told me nothing of what you have planned for my siblings and that sweet little girl," Abigail's slick British accent pointed out. A thin branch clipped between her slender fingers as Pecus rolled his body down from a tree beside her. His tongue flicked in her direction as she looked at it from the corner of her eye. "It's to your own gain?" she asked. "Somewhat. More of honor," Pecus replied. "What honor would you be seeking in a form like that?" Abigail asked. "I love you the most, fair Abigail. Can you keep my secret?" the serpent asked. "You don't deserve my silence," she simply replied.
"I want to tell you the story of a man named Abraham and his distant kin...Percius," the serpent began. Abigail's eyes narrowed as she looked back at the serpent. Behind her, an illusion of the singing, clueless children of Salem village played like they once had over the hills of the Proctor farm they belonged to.
"Your father gets his cowardice from my blood. I was weak at mind, heart, lungs, and feet. Lived in a village just like your own, where your father abandoned you with your greedy mother," the snake's disembodied voice spat as it fastened its long, nightly scaled body around the branches of the tree. Its head reared down by one of the imagined children playing with a doll. "So young I came upon a serpent with eyes as red as an apple and body as murky as the depths of a coal mine. One bite was all it took to take away my lack of mobility, lack of breath, lack of hope. Lightning rose from my fingers and the knowledge from the minds surrounding me would rise from clockwork in my brain," Pecus purred. "You became the unwritten first immortal from an animal's bite?" Abigail scoffed. "Your eyes will not believe what it hasn't seen. My brothers and sisters were all like me. Something in our mother's lineage just wasn't right. None of us were healthy. They became like me because I showed them how. You would not exist if I hadn't. The Mikaelsons wouldn't exist if I hadn't. That's where my cause arises from scrap," Pecus told Abi. Her curls danced over her shoulders as she turned to him fully, slightly leaned her head back as the snake's head now reared inches over the surface of her face so he could look into her eyes. "Powers don't just grow from seed anymore, my lovely Abigail. There were ones before us who kept themselves away from the mediocre lifestyles they didn't know. They seek to stop me and I can't stop that unless I have the numerous vessels awaiting me for when the very vessel I took from a predatory beast fails. If I must kill my own lineage, I will. If I must take new generations with it, I will," Pecus finished. "The ones before us. You think you can outrun them for the sake of saving yourself? I wouldn't play it off as if you were trying to preserve an entire population. We know your games. So who are they? The ones that came before us," Abigail scowled. "I think you already know. Sweet dreams, Abi. Enjoy your Salem," Pecus ended as he disappeared.
Hope gurgled as she watched a shadow appear on the wall over her crib, a rattle following it. Rebekah appeared in the doorway, her mind trying to wrap around the feeling of something being wrong. The shadow had gone and the serpent's call going mute. The window banged against the wall over the crib after being forced open by the strong and warm winds of Louisiana.
London, 1892
"Forgive me if I still find it bizarre a woman named after a convicted witch has shown up in my dreams and now on my doorstep, but shouldn't we be speaking more of how we are so-called family rather than what I do for a living?" Victor spoke as he sat at a small table with Abigail. The café was small, but comforting on a cloudy such as that one. Abigail, leaning forward in her tight and low-cut dress, sipped her morning drink as she looked out the window. "I've told you all you need to know. It's me and you, dearest. Now we're a part of the supernatural family, which you seemed eager to believe," Abi said vaguely. "I haven't any powers," Victor swallowed. "Perhaps you haven't found them yet," she responded.
"So then did you use yours to worm your way into my brain?" Victor scoffed. "Yes. I did. That's how you've known me since you were at the peak of adolescence. That's why we're sitting here now," Abigail answered. Victor finished off his drink as he smoothed a hand over his slicked back hair, freeing a thin strand in front. She watched him as she leaned her face on her hand over the table. "You're working on the cure to death you once told me in your dreams. Have you ever considered that's where your abilities come into play," Abigail purred. Victor set his fist gently as he tried to comprehend all she'd told him the night prior. "Victor, you've received a mark of power. But it's also a mark of suffering, I will be wise to add. If you wonder why I bring all this in now, it is because you are the purest of our sibling pairing," she continued, "That's a very big deal." He looked up at her as he went to say something, but then a completely different sentence left his lips. "How do I know you're really my sibling and that this isn't a way of luring me into your predatorial trap. Meat to the beast?" Victor spat. "Do you think I'd harm you? I know you wouldn't hurt me," Abi sighed. "I never felt like you would in my dreams, but the real world is a cruel place. There are things even the greatest minds haven't a clue about. I think you're one of them. My first impressions and thoughts could be a mirage," Victor replied. "What were your first impressions and thoughts?" Abigail asked interestedly.
They had begun to gather their things when Victor took the lead in leaving the café as the young Abi followed him. "Over the years...they've—changed," Victor breathed once they reached the niche entrance of the hidden diner, stopping before the sidewalk with Abigail. Abi's genuine stare turned into an intrigued and eerily faint smile. "I'm gaining a feeling it was more of a benign impression than present day," she almost joked. Turning to him, she was greeted by the sudden grip of his large hands on her small triceps and his lips on hers, the wind picking up and forcing the waterfall of her curly black locks off her shoulders. She kissed back after a while, placing a hand on the side of her face as she pulled away to look at him. Victor seemed to be at a loss for words at her reciprocating actions when he took a breath and regained his stern countenance and looked around. "I'll get us a coach," he said, Abi watching him walk down the road to gain notice of a carriage. She smiled slightly as she watched Victor go, but it quickly faded away upon the specific thoughts going through her mind. She felt the harsh embrace of a stranger's shoulder crash into hers as she turned to look at a man in a similar shade of black that covered him head to toe. "I'm sorry, my lady," his light matching accent rolled. She nodded as she looked him in the eyes before watching him browse her features and then walk away. Her brows furrowed slightly as she got into a carriage down the way with Victor.
The stranger paused as he stopped midstep down the street and then turned to watch her carriage ride off into the foggy distance with a smirk on his face.
Victor carefully drew a deep incision in his latest corpse's stomach, blood covering his face and hands. Klaus, invited by Vladimir, stopped in the doorway as he watched Victor carefully. Victor said things under his breath, blocked out by the noise of thunder outside. Stepping closer, Klaus looked over the corpse, which Victor had reconstructed perfectly. "What of the other bodies you keep?" Klaus asked to make conversation. "Abigail brought me Carrion beetles back from Cairo last she went. They eat away the skin and organs of any moving, breathing being. Even vampires. Makes it easier to bury them in the pit underneath my greenhouse," Victor said, "Why are you here?"
"Elijah trusts your brother enough to let him look over our mother's grimoire," Klaus said straightforwardly. Victor didn't take his eyes off the corpse. "And you're here on accounts of my sister?" Victor guessed. "We've grown to be good friends, I think," Klaus replied cockily. "I wouldn't be so quick to expect she's alright with short-term. I've seen Abi tear apart a man's heart, not to mention lifestyle because he thought she could be subdued," Victor said, not taking his eyes off the corpse. "I gathered as much based on the last month we've known your family formally. "Are you sure you can handle her, Mr. Mikaelson? You don't seem like the man for the job," Victor sighed. "I had no idea this speech would be coming from you, Victor," Klaus smirked. Victor sudden set his surgical knife down with a loud clink as he stared down Niklaus for a minute and then moved to a cabinet behind himself. "Abigail's a puzzle, Mr. Mikaelson. You've got pieces, but none match," Victor said calmly.
Klaus, licking his lips, looked down at the corpse as he leaned on the open table edge next to it. "I sense some tension over the topic," Klaus said. "I'm telling you what I know, what all the men and women on the planet already know. You've got one life to live, Niklaus. If you choose to experience it with Abigail and keep on a steady path, you better be head over heels for the lass. Or else we're going to have to ask you to start digging your own grave," Victor warned maliciously, "Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
Klaus, grin becoming less confident, stared Victor down. "Is that a threat, lad?" Klaus asked. "Not a threat. I have no dilemma with you Niklaus. You need to understand the amount of hospitality you've already received from us. Now you need to understand in this family, in the place where we come from...Abi's not just some witch from a history book. She's hell-given warning," Victor finished.
