Two Years Later

Kol hadn't felt true fear in centuries. Even while his father had been trying to track him down there hadn't been this deep terror – the terror one felt when facing their own mortality.

The witches had cast enough spells to reduce his strength to barely more than that of a human. Though he was pushing back against the white oak stake that the warlock in front of him was wielding, it had already dug an inch into his flesh and was only going deeper.

However, the warlock's motions halted when a hand was suddenly protruding from his chest.

The sound of three necks breaking registered in his mind and when he looked up he felt a pang of shock, having expected to see one of his siblings or perhaps another vampire ally of his.

Instead, Vivienne stood in front of him, though her appearance had drastically changed and it took a moment for him to recognize her. Her hair was longer and straight, a dark brown color, and paired with heavy eye makeup and red lipstick. Her outfit was also strangely foreign compared to her old style of dress – tight black jeans paired with an oversized black button down and heels that quite frankly looked more like weapons than shoes.

Without any pause the demon reached forward and yanked the white oak stake out of his chest before shoving it in her back pocket. She immediately began angrily murmuring under her breath while flicking her hand to presumably try to rid it of some of the blood that coated her arm up to her elbow.

"-of all the covens to antagonize, the one in Chicago with a white oak stake. And now I'll have to -"

Vivienne's words trailed off once more into a low, annoyed grumbling that he couldn't decipher, but before Kol could gather his thoughts the demon reached forward with her still-dripping hand and harshly grabbed one of his sleeves. After a final exasperated sigh from her, Kol suddenly felt as though his skin was too tight and he'd been scrubbed raw. However, the sensation was gone a moment later and he found himself standing in the foyer of his family's mansion in New Orleans.

Bekah, Nik, and Elijah all turned to gape at them, evidently having just been arguing if their body language was anything to go by. Kol opened his mouth to – well, he didn't quite know what to say, probably ramble out an insult or two – when he was interrupted by Vivienne shoving him towards them, speaking and looking entirely unconcerned.

"The blood bind alerted me to Kol's near-fatal condition. I'm not hanging around. So. Bye."

In a rare moment of clarity and quick thinking, Kol whipped around to face her and tightly gripped both of her wrists, preventing her from dematerializing without taking him with her. Expressionless, her face only changed as her eyes turned entirely black and dark veins crawled across her face.

"Tearing off your hands won't keep me up at night, pretty boy."

Bekah flashed over to the two of them and reached for Vivienne, perhaps hoping to embrace the woman, but she moved away. As she pulled her wrists from Kol's grasp Elijah loudly exclaimed, "Wait!"

Vivienne slowly turned to face him and crossed her arms before raising an eyebrow in condescending impatience.

"I'm leaving New Orleans; you can back off."

Elijah cringed minutely and Kol was able to see out of the corner of his eye that Nik had also stiffened a fraction at her words.

His oldest brother tried once more to speak in an earnest tone when he said, "The last time we saw you– "

Vivienne finally gave an intense reaction, visibly tightening her arms and tensing before saying in a scathing voice, "When you threw me out and I had to crawl to a witch for help so I wouldn't die?"

Without allowing anyone to respond, Vivienne faced Bekah, giving her an assessing look before she finally said in a voice much fonder than she'd spoken thus far, "I'll see you again soon, Bekah."

Turning back to the group at large, Kol saw that her expression had reverted to its bland, neutral state that gave nothing away. Just before vanishing, she spoke in a flat tone.

"Nobody knows me as Vivienne anymore. Ask around for Lethe, if you have to."

As soon as Vivienne disappeared, the entire family turned to look at Kol. Klaus barely held himself in check when he said in a demanding tone, "Tell us exactly what happened."

Kol shrugged and looked quite nonchalant, but Klaus knew Kol had been the least close to Vivienne, only interacting when others were present. When she'd – well, left might not have been the most accurate term – Kol had been unfazed, only slightly put out that they no longer had an actual demon from the Underworld as an ally. His youngest brother wandered into the sitting room and slumped down into an armchair while shrugging dismissively.

"Nothing much actually happened. I was in the midst of getting stabbed with a white oak stake after picking a fight with what turned out to be the wrong blokes when she showed up and killed them all. Then she brought me here."

Klaus nearly let his temper catch hold of him at Kol's casual mention of nearly being permanently killed, but decided that it was an issue that could be addressed after the more pressing matter was discussed.

"Did she say anything to you? Anything at all?"

Kol once more looked bored at Klaus's question and let a mocking edge enter his voice when he said, "Don't allow yourself to get desperate, brother. Just because you fancied her and then left her for dead doesn't mean you should lose your composure."

Klaus barely thought through his actions, immediately pinning Kol to his chair by the neck while his fangs descended and his eyes glowed yellow.

"Watch your tongue."

Kol only laughed delightedly in response and let his fangs retract after instinctively letting them descend during the attack, a gloating look covering his face when he responded, "I knew it! I was the first to guess that you'd be attracted to the hell-creature! Bekah, didn't I say it first?"

Klaus released Kol and stepped back to glance at his sister. Bekah hadn't looked away from the spot that Vivienne had just been and had a far off look in his eye. He was reminded of the day he had to tell his sister that Vivienne had been injured before he and Elijah had sent her away.

Bekah hadn't spoken to him for nearly two weeks and only broken her silence to scream at him for potentially causing the death of the girl that had become her best friend. When she looked now at Kol, however, to his immense annoyance she merely pouted, muttering back to him, "True, but I was the one who started it."

This… was not at all a conversation Klaus had ever thought his family would be having. His younger siblings had been playing matchmaker the whole time? To a maladjusted demon?

The very worst part was that it had worked. Two years ago there had been a few short weeks when Klaus had fancied the woman and begun to ponder the possibility of the two of them together long term. Their banter was something he had looked forward to on a daily basis, and seeing her get flustered when he flirted had been more than a little amusing. For a thousand-year-old demon, she'd been strangely bad at hiding her emotions when it came to the fact that she liked him back.

And then everything had changed when he had refused to give her a fraction of trust.

Vivienne let out an unholy, fed up shriek the moment she arrived in her apartment. Why the fuck – why was she still forced to be here? And to still be tethered to the Mikaelsons after all they had done to her seemed like an enormous 'fuck you' from the Fates.

She hadn't been accepted back to the Underworld when she'd tried to return. Instead she'd been curtly informed that her sworn duty was not complete. But seeing as the Original family were fucking immortal, there was every possibility that she was permanently stationed on earth.

And of course this was made so much better by the fact that she now knew her blood binding spell wasn't dissipating anytime soon. Whenever one of the Original vampires was in mortal danger, she'd be summoned to their side. What a joy.

Striding over to the kitchen table, Vivienne felt no shame when she grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels she'd had with breakfast-lunch-and-dinner, immediately taking a long pull straight from the already nearly-empty bottle. She had twelve more in her pantry anyway.

Seeing them all… it hurt. Distracting herself the last two years hadn't been too difficult, and she could admit that she'd enjoyed building up a reputation for herself among the shadier supernatural creatures in New York City. A Rusalka had died in the Hudson River two centuries before and the location acted as a fairly functional power source for Vivienne to use. But having to stand in front of the Mikaelsons after two years brought back all of the pain and bitterness she'd stored up the last couple of years.

Vivienne had long since come to terms with the fact that Bekah hadn't been a part of the decision to essentially let her bleed out. She hadn't been joking when she'd said she would visit the girl again – she missed the closest friend she had made on Earth. Because now, after two years of establishing herself in this world all on her own, Vivienne couldn't give less of a shit what the Mikaelson brothers said.

Vivienne had spent much of her time seeking out soulflesh weapons and seizing them as well as white oak stakes for her own peace of mind. She knew for a fact that there were no soulflesh weapons anywhere on the East Coast. And the only other manner in which she could be killed by means of a weapon required a truly elaborate plot and involved waiting until the Slavic Rusalka week in June. So if she wanted to start partying it up in New Orleans with Bekah - well, Klaus and Elijah were welcome to try to stop her.

I figured since you had to wait so long I might as well post a second update in two days. xx