Present Day
Rebekah looked into her closet. Which clothes would she miss the least if they were destroyed today? The sad truth was that every time they had gone into town since they had come to New Orleans at least one of them had come back covered in blood, ripped apart or showered in pieces of glass. She had long given up on the idea that anything would be solved without violence. By now she knew that to think otherwise was useless. But she believed that her brothers would listen to her this time. At least for a while. As long as everything would work out fine. Instead of confronting the whole coven in public again, she opted for confronting only one of them. She had been to Freya's place before and while the last time hadn't worked out the way she wanted she had to try again. This time she wouldn't snap anyone's necks. And her brothers promised to do the same. Yet, there was no need to be civil to Freya, she decided. With her uptight and self-righteous behaviour she just didn't deserve it. All Rebekah wanted from her was to find out what they had done in the woods. Niklaus also kept pressuring her to ask Freya about the notebooks she took from the mansion. Rebekah knew that in all likelyhood they would not get them back. Even if they'd get them back, somebody probably has taken copies of it. But to humour him she'd ask Freya what they had done with them. Still, none of this was worth ruining more good clothes.
A warm long bright light shone through the half-closed curtains facing the front of the house. A thin veil of dust reflected in the sunlight. It reminded Rebekah of lazy summer days where she hadn't had to do anything and they could be carefree. It was almost summer. Maybe if she solved these problems quickly they could be lazy again. That thought was quite encouraging.
As she was getting ready she suddenly heard a voice from outside the house. It was Marcel. He was talking to someone. She walked down the stairs and out of the front door, and saw Marcel still with his phone in his hand.
"Who were you talking to?" Rebekah asked.
Marcel hesitated. But that already gave her the answer.
"Are you still talking to Davina?" she asked surprised.
"Apparently we are now," he said gravely. "I don't know what she wanted, she didn't want to tell me on the phone. But it sounded urgent. I'll probably go visit her."
Rebekah nodded slowly. Her own indifference about it surprised her a little.
"Are you keeping this to yourself then?" he asked.
"Yes," Rebekah replied. "I don't wanna do yet another witch hunt after this one."
"This one?" he asked. "Are you going to Freya?"
"Haven't you heard? We're following Rebekah's plan now," Rebekah said. "Or at least Rebekah's alternative plan. My instinct still tells me that we should have left long ago."
Marcel put his phone in his pocket, and replied: "I'm actually agreeing with your brothers for once. You already left, but the past still came back to haunt you. Confrontation might not be the most appealing alternative, but eventually it's the only way to get past your problems."
"Isn't that the perk of being a vampire? Waiting until your problems just die out?"
Marcel laughed. "That'd be a lot of waiting and wasted time if you ask me."
"And if you ask me, which none of you evidently did, I would tell you that you're barking up the wrong tree," he added. "Do you know what Marcel's plan would have been? Instead of running after your sister, I'd be dealing with the real problem here, which is that your brother just killed high ranking werewolf. Freya looks pretty harmless to me."
"Those who look harmless are usually the most dangerous ones," Nik said as he walked towards them.
Rebekah turned around. "Stop sneaking up on people. It's a terrible habit."
"I wasn't sneaking up on you," Nik replied irritated. "I'm just patiently waiting for any instructions on when we're leaving."
"You're not coming," Rebekah said.
"Of course, I am" he replied.
Rebekah knew that this was already a lost battle. "Fine, I'm leaving in two minutes. I won't wait for anyone who's late."
"I'm getting Elijah," Nik said with a small smirk.
When she was sure he was out of earshot, she said to Marcel: "Just tell her to get as far away as possible."
In front of Freya's apartment complex there were still the dried out remnants of a dark red puddle on the ground. Rebekah was surprised that nobody took care of the place.
"Was that you, Rebekah?" Nik asked with genuine interest.
"They should clean more often," she replied without looking back.
They walked up the stairs until they reached the landing of Freya's apartment. It looked cleaner than outside but there was still a smell of death in the air.
She knocked at the door. There was rumbling noise from inside the apartment, but nobody opened the door.
"See, I told you, she's not opening the door for us," Nik said, leaning on one side of the door frame.
"She doesn't know it's us," Rebekah replied and knocked again.
"Not yet," Nik said.
Rebekah knocked a third time, trying to keep it a light knock. She imagined that this was the kind of knock that a peace-seeking person would do.
Trampling foot steps echoed from the other side of the wall and grew louder. A second later the door was ripped open.
"What?" Freya demanded angrily.
Her hair was disheveled and her eyes somewhat swollen. She was upset about something. Taken by surprise, Rebekah moved back a little and bumped into Elijah.
"Oh, it's you three," she said with an artificial laugh when she recogonized them. "Just splendid. The day just keeps getting better."
Without paying them any more attention, she turned away again and walked to the other end of the small hallway were she had gathered piles of books and files. The door stood wide open and Freya didn't seem to intend to close it anytime soon. In a different corner, Rebekah saw a large suitcase and several half filled bags.
"Are you going somewhere?" she asked.
"It's impossible to keep anything from you, isn't it?" Freya replied with gritted teeth, without looking up from her files.
"Wait," Nik said, as he held out his hand into the apartment. "There's no barrier. You're not keeping us out."
He took a step inside. Rebekah and Elijah slowly followed suit.
"I take it it's not because she invited us," Rebekah quietly said to her brothers.
"No, it's definitely not because I invited you," Freya slapped her last file onto the pile and then turned around to face them again.
"Funny story: You remember hat landlord that 'mysteriously' died? Turned out he was in debt, and the first thing his next of kin did to get out of it was selling this house. Which means I have to leave this place by the end of the week."
"Oh," Rebekah replied. She peaked around the corner and inspected what she assumed was the living room. She figured that Freya did the best she could do with the place. Her furniture was pretty nice. But the walls seemed mouldy and the fitted carpet looked like it had been there for half a century. "How unfortunate."
Nik followed her and took a step into the living room as well. "I'm sure there are lots of free apartments in New Orleans that just look as sh-"
Rebekah gave him push into his ribs before he finished his sentence. "And you can't stay with any of your… friends?" he said instead.
Freya's eyes fell on the ground and she stopped filing.
"What is this time you want from me?" she asked after a pause.
Even though she felt some pity for her sister in these circumstances, Rebekah reminded herself of her no need to be civil-attitude.
"Tell us about the spell that happened in the woods," she demanded.
Freya sighed and stared into the distance. Eventually she said: "Doesn't matter what happened. It didn't work anyway."
"Something did happen," Nik replied.
"No, it didn't," Freya said.
"Yes, it did," he said again. "We saw the green light!"
"And I'm telling you nothing happened!" Freya turned angrily to him. "Believe me when I say that I wanted something to happen, but it didn't!"
"You need to tell us what you tried to do," Elijah interrupted them.
Some of Freya's anger vanished. With some hesitation she replied: "I suppose it doesn't matter anymore in any case. We tried to resurrect a powerful witch."
"What for?" Elijah asked.
"To kill you," Freya replied.
"Who?" Nik asked.
"Didn't you hear what I just said? It didn't work! Why does any of this still matter to you?" Freya said ill-tempered.
"Why should we believe you?" Nik asked.
"What do you think I'm doing here? I'm scrambling together what's left from my existence and am about to leave town. Because I alienated everyone I knew here by messing up that spell and through that destroying the power of the coven, and by being related to you."
Her voice sounded higher pitched and more unstable than before. She seemed angry, but there was none of her usual self-righteous attitude in her tone anymore. She turned away from them and mindlessly looked through her folders.
With a much quieter voice she continued: "I would be lying to myself if I still blamed you for all this. I should have never come here, never stayed here. I was stupid too think that I could build up a life like this. If your twisted minds truly have a shed of care or respect for me, then I ask of you just this one small thing: Please leave me alone."
Rebekah exchanged looks with her brothers. They believed her story, too. Maybe just this one time they should leave her alone. Rebekah was about to make a hint that they should leave, but then she remembered something.
"One more thing," she said.
"What did you do to those books you took from our house?"
Freya sighed. "What?"
"What books?" she added, and turned around to face them. She looked genuinely confused.
"The books you took from our house. Notebooks and small paper booklets," Rebekah said.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You took them," Nik replied. "They were missing after you had left the house."
"I didn't! I had barely time to think. Why would I steal anything from your house?" Freya snapped back.
"He's right. They were missing after you had left the house," Elijah said. "They couldn't just disappear in thin air."
Freya was about to retort, but then stopped. After a pause she said: "Davina had a large bag with her when she left the house with me. I assumed they were her things."
"What was it? What did she do with it?" Nik asked.
"I don't know," Freya replied. "I have barely seen her since then. The last time was in the night of the spell, actually."
Rebekah had always assumed that it was Davina who took the books. But she thought that she had shared them with the coven, used them to reinstate her position with them. What if she didn't? Why did she keep them to herself? Rebekah tried to put the pieces together. Before she had a chance to figure out what it could mean, she saw in Nik's face that he had come to the same realization. A split second later he was gone. She and Elijah exchanged the annoyed look they had so often in the recent days.
"Where did he go?" Freya asked.
"To get the books from Davina," Elijah said with a grumble.
"We should go after him," he added and turned to Rebekah.
"I'll be right there," Rebekah said.
It was typical for her brothers to exchange their current problem to a seemingly more urgent one. But those stupid books weren't why she was here. Marcel's words came through her head and what Nik had said a few nights before. It would be better to deal with a problem now, instead of running away. Freya was still their sister even if they'd leave the room now. If she left it'd only postpone the problem for another time. She didn't know how to convince Freya yet, but Rebekah didn't want it to fail just because she left again. She sat down on the sofa.
After Elijah had gone, Freya asked: "Will she be okay?"
"Depends. If Elijah gets there in time."
Freya moved her hands together and awkwardly stayed in the door frame. Evidently she didn't know what to do with the fact that Rebekah stayed behind.
Rebekah began: "Listen, I won't repeat what I told you once about having a sister bond. I know nothing of that will reach you. But from a pragmatic point of view, you have to accept that we are connected, even if you don't want it. Hell, I can't do anything about it either. So get over the petty attitude. But now that we know about the connection, and you know about it, and many other people do as well, our paths will cross even more often. If you've come to accept this, or if you just don't know where else to go, you know where to find me."
As she stepped out of the apartment complex, she turned left and right, not knowing where to go. Running after Elijah who was running after Nik felt like chore. A chore that she wished she could postpone. Rebekah tried to remember those lazy summer days in the past again, but she realized they had never existed. She had dreamt of them many times but that's all they were. Dreams. There had never been a time they had been carefree.
1800, Maligrad, Lake Prespa
He couldn't feel anymore. It wasn't dark or bright. It was nothing. All Niklaus perceived was some sort of anticipation. As if he was about to say something or as if he was waiting to do something, but he had no body to do it with. He couldn't remember what had happened in between or how much time had passed. All he remembered was a sudden ringing in his ears. Deep nothingness was still around him. Far, far away he believed to hear someone shouting. It was a damp sound. He couldn't understand what it was saying. It slipped in and out of his mind. Slowly it grew louder. It was a female voice shouting his name. He forced himself to open his eyes. It was terribly exhausting and painful.
"Nik!" he heard again.
Shrill and blinding light penetrated his eyes. It was too bright to adapt to his blurry surroundings. His arms that seemed to be on a different planet tried to cover his view, but they felt like they were buried deep underneath him. Niklaus heard his name again. His head was turning. The light was hurting his whole body. He closed his eyes again.
"Dammit! You can't pass out again!" he heard someone shouting over him.
His head became heavy. The soothing darkness felt so welcome.
Suddenly he felt the familiar and warm sensation that touched his lips and slowly entered his mouth. He drank and some of the pain went away.
Relived by the taste of blood he opened his eyes again. It was still bright but more bearable than before. Briony came in focus in front of him. She looked pale and had dark corners around her eyes. She was breathing heavily. Only now he realized that he was half sitting, leaning against a wall. She held his head up. Even for a human, her hands were ice cold.
"You're awake!" she said with widened eyes.
"What happened?" he whispered. It was difficult to speak and he had trouble moving the rest of his body. Even leaning against a wall seemed exhausting. A table, the wooden walls, an empty stove. He realized that they were in the house. It took him a moment to remember how he came to be in this situation. Esther. The spell. Something must have gone terribly wrong.
"Where is she?" he said, with more determination now. Trying to get up, failing. His knees did not as they were told at all.
"She's long gone!" Briony pushed him down again. "There's nothing you can do right now."
Then she spoke with a softer voice: "The important thing right now is that one of you is awake."
He didn't understand. Was he asleep?
"What do you mean?" he said, but the question answered itself as he turned his head.
He saw Rebekah, Kol, Finn, Elijah, Flora and Katherine lying next to him, all of them completely motionless, as if they were in a deep sleep.
"How?" he asked. He wasn't sure what exactly he was asking, he had so many questions.
"That's how I found all of you on the meadow and in the forest. I brought you here."
His head spun. "We have to go after her!" he said and tried to get up again.
"It useless, Nik! I told you, she's long gone!" she said, not letting him get up. "Have you any idea how long you've been out?"
"How long?"
Briony hesitated. Then she said: "18 days." After a pause she added: "And that's since I woke up."
She sat down next to him. "To be fair, I couldn't have been unconscious for a long time, else I would have starved."
Nik tried to make sense of all this information. 18 days. It had felt like he was out for a few minutes, not several weeks. Then he saw the open wound on Briony's wrist.
"You fed me your blood," he eventually said. "That was nice of you."
Briony didn't reply right away. After a while she said: "When I woke up, and found all of you… I thought you were dead. That Esther somehow had managed to kill you. First I found Kol and Finn pretty close to me in the forest. I saw that Finn was staked and saw that Kol had the same wound in his back, so I figured he'd wake up any moment. He didn't. And then I found the rest of you just as motionless on the meadow. I panicked. It took me a day to realize that if you were dead you should be decomposing. That gave me some hope. So I waited." She put her head on his shoulder.
He looked at his siblings. They didn't look dead. Not like when they had a stake in their heart. They just lay completely still with closed eyes, like they'd wake up any second.
"Wait, Finn's not staked anymore. I staked him. Why is he here with the others?" he asked.
Briony sat up again. "I figured that was you. He was in the forest as well. I unstaked him in the hope that he might not be affected by the spell. And that he'd be able to help me if he'd wake up."
"You thought he'd help you?" he asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I was desperate, okay? You try being stuck on an island with seven dead bodies."
His eyes still rested on his motionless siblings. Part of him wondered how Briony managed to carry them all in here. He saw that she had put a little pillow under Kol's head. He doubted that this made any difference to him in this state, but Niklaus decided it wasn't necessary to point that out now. No matter what was wrong with them, he could tell with certainty now that the spell could not possibly have gone right. What was it that Esther wanted to do with them? He suspected she didn't just want them to pass out for three weeks.
Briony must have had the same thoughts.
"What happened, Nik?" she asked. "What did she do?"
"I don't know."
"Did you see what she did in the spell? Like motions, chants?"
"No idea. I wasn't there. I tried to reach her in time, but I was too late."
After what felt like an eternity he decided that he was well enough to get up and stumbled into a standing position. He knew what he had to do.
"Okay, let's go," he decided.
Still sitting, Briony looked at him in bewilderment.
"We have to leave right now and find her," Niklaus said again. Not knowing what else to do, he held out a hand to pull her up.
"We can't leave them here like this," Briony responded, not making any motion to get up.
"I will not let her get away with this. I'm leaving with or without you."
"Fine, you do that. I'm not going anywhere until the others wake up," Briony replied.
"Fine," he said and turned around.
"But before you run off into nowhere we might wanna find out what happened during that spell."
Nik turned back and considered her for a moment. Then he said quietly: "I felt this painful burning sensation in my chest that kept growing. I thought she was going to kill us right there. It felt that way."
"I thought so. But why didn't she? What happened? Did you stop her somehow?"
"I tried but I don't think I did. But something must have happened. I lost my footing and then got unconscious."
"Considering that you passed out for almost 3 weeks I suggest that something did happen."
They went outside into the broad daylight. It was colder than Nik had remembered. They sat down in the small paved entry area of the house. Without any further comment he stretched out his hand to Briony. She pulled out a knife from her skirt and cut into his hand. His blood trickled onto the dark pavement. As she mumbled something to herself the blood expanded as it was supposed to. When it stop to expand she waved her hand. They waited. At first it seemed like a line was about to evolve. But then it didn't. Both looked at the blood drop on the ground. It didn't move.
"Again!" Briony said fiercely. She waved her hand impatiently to give her his hand again. "It's not working. Let's do it again."
He held out his hand for a second time. She grabbed it and cut it another time, this time much harsher.
She went through the same motions, and again they waited after she waved her hand over the expanded drop. They stared at the drop, as if by pure will power they'd make it move. When he looked very closely, Niklaus believed, he could see a beginning of a line, but it was almost impossible to say. Briony held her hand over it, mumbling something to herself. Nik didn't know what that meant. She had never done that before. With closed eyes, she seemed to be counting something. Then she stopped and opened her eyes. The fear in her eyes felt like a bullet pressing into his chest. Ignoring him she got up and turned away, cursing.
"What's going on?" he asked, not at all surprised by the dryness of his voice.
Briony didn't reply. He too got up, and held her arm to face her. "You have to tell me what's going on," he demanded.
Briony was shaking. "There's no way to sugarcoat this," she said with a shaky voice. "Esther's spell worked."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you remember what she said about the neck of the hourglass and that she wanted to tighten it?"
"Yeah?"
"She didn't. She did the opposite and loosened it."
Nik didn't need an explanation on what that meant, but Briony continued nevertheless: "She has shortened your lives. A lot."
"How short?" he asked. He swallowed. He didn't want to hear the answer.
"10 years."
Some thoughts I had the other day: Something I liked about the early days depiction of the TVD Originals was the mysteriousness and seductiveness around them. And I realized that this story doesn't have this at all, because I usually have one of them as the POV and they just don't see each other as mysterious. Oh well, maybe I can use it in a different fic one day :-)
As always, thank you for reading and I'm always happy to hear what you think in the comments!