What I wanted to write wouldn't come out...so I wrote this instead...it also didn't want to come out...my apologies.

WARNINGS: child abuse, murder, The Separation, no slurs but rude ways to talk about someone, an f-bomb, lots of crying and screaming, an adult (not Mikael) being a dick to a kid... This is a flashback chapter that doesn't further the plot but it tells you some of what happened.

8.8 - May 10th, 1996

The guy at the door said his name was Ansel. Freya wasn't exactly keen to let him enter, especially with the mood Father was in, but, as the perfect daughter she was expected to be, she let him in. Her manners demanded it.

She had no idea what she was doing by letting him come in.

She showed Ansel to the sitting room, where Mother and Father were. At the sight of Ansel, her parents stood. Mother looked concerned while Father looked angry.

Ansel said, "you know why I'm here."

Mother looked between both men, and responded, "Ansel, I'm not sure that's a good idea." Freya looked from Mother to Father to Ansel, feeling like she'd missed part of the conversation.

Father growled, a tone he used exclusively for Niklaus, "get out of here before I make you."

Ansel looked like he was biting down his anger. Freya watched from the doorway, knowing she should leave. No one had told her to, though, and she was curious. The man said, "I just want my son. I know what you've done to him, and I want to take him somewhere where he won't be hated."

"Excuse me?" Mother cried, disgusted.

Father glared. "You mean the mutt? He's no son of mine, but he isn't yours, either. I've been forced to raised him, unfortunately. You're nothing to him."

Freya, at first unsure of who they were talking about, got the sudden realization when she watched Ansel glare back. His jaw jumped as he clenched his teeth, something that Niklaus did a lot. Oh my god, she thought.

"I will be when I take him away from the two of you. Esther, you even told me, you don't love him or want him. At least in my home he would be around people who don't detest his very existence."

Father was enraged by the insult he saw in the words, the way that - he thought, at least - Ansel insulted his parenting skills. Freya knew he didn't have any skills, but thought he did, and due to that, Ansel's words were insults. Father hated being insulted; it made him the kind of angry that was dangerous to more than just Niklaus.

She didn't stick around long enough to watch Father go after Ansel with his favorite bat - one that he'd stolen from Kol.

She ran upstairs, and pulled her siblings from their rooms. She pushed them all into their parents' room, the only one with a lock. Once they were all in, she didn't both to explain - she just said, "a man named Ansel is here, and he angered Father, and he's going to hurt him."

"What?" Finn demanded. "What the fu- hell are you talking about, Freya?"

Niklaus, much more pale than usual, said blankly, "my father is down there. My true father." His voice was the same as it was after a beating - rough, angry, inflection-less. Freya hated it.

Rebekah gasped, crying from the stress of it all, and Kol wrapped his arms around her. Elijah held onto Henrik a litte tighter.

They were silent for a moment, thinking about that. Once, when Rebekah was a baby, they'd all gotten together and talked about it - when or if Niklaus' birth father would show up to take him away. They'd give him up, they agreed, as long as they could still communicate with each other. They hadn't imagined this, though - that he would show up and Father, who often said he hated Niklaus, would deny him taking his son away.

Before anyone could say anything, there was a screech from downstairs that sounded inhuman. Freya's hair stood on end.

Niklaus didn't feel the same way. He ran to the door, and unlocked it quickly. He sprinted downstairs, Elijah - sans Henrik, who now sat on the bed - hot on his heels. Freya thought, goddammit, and told Finn, "you stay here and lock the door. Don't let him in."

She didn't say who - she didn't have to. She and Finn shared a look, silent but full of words. They didn't have to speak verbally to converse about this - this was Code FUBAR, and it wouldn't be just Niklaus who was hurt, like they'd predicted. No, there was Elijah, and Mother, and even Ansel. And Freya, but she didn't put any more thought into going downstairs to help.

She ran downstairs, the door slamming behind her, to find a horrific scene.

Mother was in a pool of blood - at first, she couldn't tell where it was coming from, but a few, nauseated steps closer told her that Mother's throat was slit. Not far from her, Ansel lay, head bashed in from Father's bat.

And not far from them was Elijah. He was standing over the prone form of their half-brother, who had curled himself into the fetal position. The bat was held in one of Elijah's hands, like he'd grabbed it before it could hit him.

While Niklaus was often put at Father's mercy, Elijah wasn't. Sure, Father had hit him before, but that was because Elijah had gone too far in protecting his younger brother. This, in contrast, was a direct conflict with Father that would never be tolerated.

As always, Freya's predictions were true - she watched as Father ripped the bat from Elijah's grip and hit him over the head like he was hitting a home run. Elijah stumbled over Niklaus, and fell to the floor, clutching his stomach in one hand and his head in the other. She didn't dwell on the way his stomach was dripping blood like a faucet; instead, she looked over Niklaus. He was unconscious, clearly severely injured.

Freya was often the soft spoken one of her siblings, tying with her oldest younger brothers for the spot. Rebekah, Niklaus and Kol weren't even close, and Henrik couldn't speak, so there was quite the competition. Soft spoken, though, didn't mean nicest - that was Henrik's spot, if only because all of his siblings had the anger issues of their father, and he was a baby.

Freya was no different. She would shout, mostly, and threaten to run away or get a tattoo and show it off to all of his friends. That's not what happened this time - no, this time, she saw red.

In a move only Elijah had ever done before, Freya charged Father. He laughed cruelly as he saw her approach.

"Oh, Freya, what are you going to do? If neither of your pathetic brothers could do it, then you certainly can't, either."

She paid him no mind, and didn't respond. Instead, she reached for the bat with both hands, desperate to get it away from him.

He laughed again and threw her to the ground using her grip on the bat. The second she was down, he kicked her in the ribs. He was infuriated - it wasn't something she'd ever seen directed at her before.

His hissed words brought her out of her thoughts. "I won't kill you, if only because you've been loyal to me. But the next time you pull a stunt like this, you'll end up like your mother." He pulled out his Swiss Army knife, now bloodied, and slashed at her face. It didn't connect, but it was close enough that any bravado she'd had was completely gone. She looked up at him with fearful eyes.

"You shouldn't see this," he cooed. Then, his foot connected with her head roughly, and she was gone.

8.9 - May 10th, 1996

When the police pounded on the door, Finn, despite Rebekah's screeching, opened it. She wasn't sure what happens immediately after - just that the police came in, dragged them out, and made them sit in the lawn while the ambulances took away five stretchers - three with her siblings on them, two with body bags - and the cop car took away her father, who scowled and raged at them. She was told not to think about him, but if she didn't think about him, then she thought about what actually happened.

The cops forced her to keep her eyes forward, she'll remember. They wouldn't let her look in the sitting room; when Kol tried to look, they snapped at him. Only Finn was left to look without being shouted at - Henrik's head was hidden under his baby blanket, and none of the cops seemed to care if Finn saw or not.

The only other vivid memory of the scene she had was the way the neighbors looked at her family. Mystic Falls was a small community, and every time anything with the cops happened, it was a neighborhood spectacle. (Later, Kol will say it was the first kind of attention he got that was negative that he didn't revel in. Father's neglect was a game to him, but the neighbor's eyes peering at them angered him.)

She remembered curling into Finn's side, Kol, with Henrik in his small arms, curled into the other.

She didn't remember the car ride, but she remembered the police station. They'd been sat down at a table, told to talk about what happened. So the younger three didn't have to, Finn had answered every question: they don't know, they weren't downstairs, they were hiding, they were scared, we were fucking scared, what did you want from us, to get killed?

Then, he asked where the other three were and if they were alright and what in the hell happened - the cop responded by saying that it didn't matter, as there didn't seem to be anyone to contact and that meant one thing: going to the system.

It wasn't until the next day she understood what the system was.

They'd spent all night on a cot on the floor of Nik's hospital room. She woke to the sounds of adults saying it was time to go - then, they tried to get Finn to leave, but he wouldn't. He punched a cop, and was wrestled to the ground, and she was screaming. Nik was, too, and Henrik. Henrik was screeching because that's what babies did; Nik was screaming because Kol was ripped out of the room by his arms, then Finn, then Henrik, then her. She could hear his wailing all the way to the elevator.

8.10 - May 11th, 1996

Freya was woken by the screams. She couldn't move, her ribs were on fire. She was forced to endure listening as Rebekah pleaded to go back to Niklaus' room, as Finn, before the younger girl, was shouted down from trying to yell his siblings' names.

A nurse named Rachel came in a little while later, after the screaming and crying had stopped, and gave her a friendly look. "It's crazy, really. Those kids were so loud they must've shook the whole building." She laughed, and looked at Freya like she wanted her to laugh back.

Freya didn't. She didn't find it funny, not at all - she hadn't seen her siblings since the door closed behind her what felt like an eternity before. They'd been in Niklaus' room, which meant he'd seen them; she suspected that he wasn't laughing, either.

"Whatever," she sighed, not bothering for any kind of manners anymore. Father was probably in jail, so what did it matter if she wasn't perfect?

Rachel gave her the stink eye, but didn't comment. She left after a moment, leaving Freya unsure of why she was there in the first place.

In another room not far from Freya's, Elijah lay, blinking lazily at the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. rerun. His head hurt and throbbed, making watching the show a process. It wasn't fun, but he didn't really mind it all that much.

His injuries - both his concussion and the stab wound Father had stuck him with the second he'd gotten between him and Niklaus - had led to something good happening. They were all never going back to that mansion. On top of that, he'd finally defended Niklaus the way he deserved.

The only downside was that leaving the house meant leaving each other - he could guess that much from the way his siblings had so fiercely not wanted to leave Niklaus' room.

Life wouldn't be easy again, not that it ever was. No nurse had come in to tell him, but he could guess - he would be going from the home that he was raised in to a foster home, or if he was lucky, a home where he was adopted. Lucky being subjective, of course.

For now, he wouldn't focus on it. His head hurt so bad he wasn't sure he could even if he wanted to, anyway.

8.11 (part one: 31st May 1996; part two: June 3rd, 1996; part three: January 1st, 1997)

Kol glared at the woman trying to send him into the house. She made another bargain that he ignored pointedly.

"No."

"Kol, come on. You've already been adopted. You're going to be living here until they move, and then you're going to go wherever they go."

"No!"

"Stop being immature and just go in there, Kol." I'm barely six and my whole family is gone, Kol wanted to shout and scream and cry, but he didn't. He was silent.

"No! No!"

Kathy, his new mother, came out of the house, no longer carrying his bag. She saw what was happening and crouched down on his level. "Hi sweetie."

"Leave me alone," Kol bit out.

"I'm sorry, but I can't. Well, not out here. If you want, you can go up to your new room and be alone there? But just until dinner, then you'll have to come downstairs."

Kol looked her in the eyes, unsure. Eventually, he looked down, and mumbled, "fine."

"Good, thank you." Katherine stood, and told the social worker with a glare, "you can go now." Her 'don't come back unless it's to finalize the papers' wasn't said and probably wasn't heard, but she meant it.

With a scowl, Kol went inside and the woman got into her car and sped off. Good riddance, Kol thought, laying on his new bed.

…

Henrik was just as uneasy about being taken from his siblings as the rest. Even though he was a baby, he'd only ever gotten comfort from his siblings, and didn't want to be taken from them at all.

It was like losing his parents, the ones who'd raised him. He'd lost his parents, the ones who made him, but he'd lost his real parents: his siblings, the only people who cared about him.

Reflecting back on it, he can remember that he didn't mind, necessarily, going to a new family, but would deny himself any comfort from his new parents, Jason and Teresa. He wouldn't play with Emily, and he wouldn't cry when he needed things. He was too worried he would get in trouble, or get hurt like his siblings, so he was quiet at all times.

He was the opposite of Kol, who he still remembered in those days. He never acted out, not once.

Eventually, he was taken to therapy, and eventually, he forgot his birth family. He opened himself up to the Bell family, and was there when Sarah was born.

Through it all, he lost the memories of his siblings, yes, but he never forgot that whatever the hell happened, it was so bad he had to go to therapy when he was two years old.

…

Rebekah sighed heavily at the couple in front of her. They weren't her first, and the more they talked about how they'd lost a child the year she was born, the more she didn't want to go with them. They'd just be using her as a replacement for that kid.

The woman, Alice, reached across the table to grasp her hand. "We know how this sounds, but...we would really love it if you came to live with us. Just for a test run, if you want. Just to see if we work together."

Rebekah eyed her warily. At five, she knew all too well that those nice, cutesy words didn't mean a lot. But on the other hand, she was sick of the foster home she was in. There were older girls who always tormented her, and younger girls who said she had cooties.

Finally, she looked to her social worker, and asked, "can I have a test run?"

Quick question: I'm going to write another of these soon, one about what happened to Freya, Finn, and Elijah, and one about what happened to Klaus during and after his time in the system. Are there any others you'd like to see? (Ex: what happened when Mikael ran off with Esther)