A/N: Quick update this time, because this is still mostly set-up. I don't think I'll have a really consistent update schedule; I'm trying to wait until I have a rough draft of the next chapter before posting a new one, but we'll see how long that lasts.

Still don't own The Vampire Diaries, I'm afraid.

Thanks for reading!

Sigrid hadn't seen Elijah since the mid nineties, but he was much the same as he had always been. He had grown his hair out a little (which was a shame, because it looked much better short, and Sigrid wasn't afraid to tell him so), but he still dressed immaculately and carried himself as if there were a rather wide and long stick shoved up his-

"And you're certain that they're alright?" Elijah asked for what must have been the fourth or fifth time in the two day period that he and Sigrid had been tracking Niklaus, cleaning up his mess as he traipsed about as a giant wolf, leaving dead people and animals in his wake.

Sigrid sighed fondly and turned to look down at Elijah from where she was perched 20 feet up in a tree, monitoring a distant Niklaus who was currently rolling around happily in . . . something. The sun was just cresting through the tops of the trees, scattering dappled rays of light across Elijah's dark suit and hair, and lightening his worried umber eyes-so like her own and Kol's (and Mother's)-to a warm and pleasing hickory. "Of course I'm certain, Lijah, the six of us are connected through blood and magic" Sigrid assured patiently. "I'm not sure where they are precisely, Nik has them cloaked of course, but I feel them move to a new location once every few months or so. Right now I think they're somewhere in the Midwest. I've nearly found them before, a couple of times, but Nik knows I can sense them, obviously, and every time I get close, he moves them somewhere new. The arse," she pouted, and Elijah cracked a helpless smile-which, of course, had been precisely her intention. A thousand years of experience with her siblings (with the exception of Finn, with whom she still had more experience than any mortal brother-sister pair could ever hope to achieve) had taught her exactly how to make each of them smile. Also how to make them angry, or hurt, but she tried to use her power exclusively for good when it came to her family.

Up ahead, Niklaus perked up and rolled to his feet, locking onto the figure of a large stag in the distance. The deer froze for a moment, sensing the eyes of a predator, then darted off. Niklaus wasted no time in beginning his pursuit. Elijah sighed and followed on foot, blurring with the speed of his movement, while Sigrid followed from above. She flew lightly through the trees, landing only briefly in each one, and moving nimbly and delicately enough to pass by without so much as disturbing the leaves. By the time she caught up to her brothers, both of whom were much faster than her, Niklaus had already felled the stag, and was gleefully tearing at its magnificent throat while its dead brown eyes stared blankly towards the clear sky. Its great rack of antlers tore gouges in the earth as its head moved with the force of Niklaus' feasting.

Sigrid swallowed dryly, a foreboding feeling overtaking her as she glanced warily between Elijah and the stag. That couldn't be good. Oh how she hated symbolism.

"You know he's going to be furious with me when he comes back to himself," Elijah said casually. Clearly he was reading her mind again. "Will I be able to count on your support?"

With a spike of annoyance, Sigrid leapt gracefully through open air, the wind carrying her along, to land in an immense ash tree just behind Elijah. She hooked her long legs around a bough near his head and swung around in a gymnastic maneuver so that she hung upside down from the branch, face to face with her brother, and gave him a grumpy look. A moment later, gravity caught up to her and sent her long brown locks cascading downward around both their heads.

This startled a laugh out of Elijah, who reached up and smoothed her hair away from her face, scratching her scalp lightly as he went, just the way he knew she liked. He was smiling again. Damn him! He made it so hard to stay irritated! If Sigrid knew how to make her siblings melt, they sure knew how to do the same to her. She huffed, and yanked herself upward into a sitting position, straddling the branch with her back to the trunk of the tree, legs kicking anxiously through the air. "Why do you have to say it like that?" she grumbled eventually. "Like supporting you means I can't support him too?"

"Perhaps in this matter that is precisely the case," Elijah said solemnly. "Niklaus and I have once again found ourselves at odds. Now I know you dislike taking sides amongst our family, Sigrid, but surely even you must admit that Niklaus is unquestionably the one in the wrong here?"

Sigrid bit her lip and leaned back against the ash. Hmm, this tree was utterly infested with some kind of invasive species of beetle. It would be dead within the year if she left it as it was. She pulled one leg up underneath her and rotated enough to put a palm flat against the trunk. Closing her eyes, she allowed herself to connect to the tree, suffusing it with her power.

It was a fairly old white ash, it had stood here for more than 200 years feeling the seasons come and go, but it had never felt the touch of something like her before, and it showed. The tree fairly quivered with energy as she sent her power through its fibers, rooting out where the invading beetles had hidden themselves. Its leaves and branches shook and swayed in a nonexistent breeze as Sigrid focused on the beetles, painlessly and smoothly urging them out of the tree through the holes they had bored in its tissue.

There must have been thousands of them. Most of them were still in semi-larval states, but the few adults were a beautiful iridescent green color. No sooner had they emerged but a flock of birds of all shapes and sizes swooped out of nowhere to snatch them up. Woodpeckers and larks and thrushes and nuthatches descended in droves from seemingly nowhere at all to snag a beakful of beetles, and for a moment the air was made of wings and beaks and birdsong, before-as suddenly as they appeared-they dispersed, and the air was clear once more.

That part of the problem handled, and no beetles wasted, Sigrid turned back to the tree and began the process of repairing it. She called upon the earth to send nutrients and minerals to the tree, she pulled energy from the sun, and water from the ground and the air, and urged them all together to heal the tree as quickly as she could, repairing the damaged tissue until the great ash was practically glowing with health (as a matter of fact, to a select few eyes, it was glowing a little, and it would continue to do so until Sigrid's power had completely left its system). Its bark was healthy and tough, its trunk and roots strong, and its leaves gleaming brightly in the sun.

All said, the entire process took less than five minutes. Sigrid sighed, satisfied with a job well done, and turned around to lean her back against the trunk once more. As soon as she did so, Elijah caught her eye as he gave her an utterly unimpressed look, pursing his lips. The peace she had just achieved rushed out of her in one great wave, and Sigrid slumped unhappily. "Are you satisfied, sister?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow. "Perhaps you'd like to turn your attention back to the problem at hand now?"

"Forgive me for trying to fix what problems I can, Elijah!" Sigrid snapped, folding her arms over her stomach defensively. "This," she gestured to the tree, "is more my wheelhouse than solving family disputes has ever been."

"I disagree," Elijah said patiently. He turned toward Sigrid fully and raised his arms. She recognized the signal from back when they were human (or when Elijah and the others had been human, anyway, since Sigrid never really had been), when she would climb too far into a tree for her even-then great skills to help her come down. Elijah would always find her, and lift his arms up to her, and promise to catch her if she would only just trust him to do so. She always had, and he had never failed her. That remained true to this day, and so despite her stress over the situation he was putting her in, Sigrid did not hesitate to jump out of the ash tree and into Elijah's embrace. He caught her as easily as he ever had, and gently lowered her bare feet to the ground. Her toes touched down onto cool pine needles, leaves, and dirt, and it was instinct to scrunch her digits down into the soft earth, feeling her connection to it down to her bones.

Elijah continued, reaching up to tuck a lock of her wild hair behind her ear, "My lovely little sister, you have so often been the common ground that unites the rest of us. There is bad blood between us all, but you have never failed to forgive, and to love as if nothing ever went wrong in the first place. I am so grateful to you for that. But the time has come to take a stand. Niklaus has betrayed our siblings, our family, and it is not fair to them to allow them to suffer any longer, no matter how he may have justified himself to you."

That phrasing reignited the spark of anger in Sigrid's chest, and she slapped Elijah's hand away in a fit of pique. Oof, that definitely hurt her more than it did him. "First of all, don't act innocent, Elijah. I seem to recall you having a hand in daggering your siblings now and again over the years, myself included! Rebekah has, as well! Kol is in a box right now because of the two of you collaborating with Niklaus to put him there! I suppose it's only a fitting punishment when you deem it to be?" Elijah tried to interject, then, but Sigrid cut him off and continued, turning away as she did so. "Second of all, I'm not a child, Elijah. He hasn't somehow manipulated me into thinking what he's done is right. I know it isn't, but I'm also the only one who's ever bothered to try to understand why he acts like this, rather than just trying to curb his behavior. You can't just treat the symptoms without understanding the cause!" Peripherally, Sigrid noticed that at some point Niklaus had given them the slip, leaving the bloodied deer carcass behind. No matter, they would find him again easily enough. She could sense him not two miles ahead, having the time of his life as he tore through the wilderness.

Elijah's eyes bored into her, causing the hairs on the back of her neck to stick up straight, sensing the gaze of an apex predator. But when he spoke, his voice was as steady and calm as ever. "Sigrid," he began gently, "you yourself said just moments ago that you've been searching for our siblings. That you know they deserve to be free. Why do you rail against me when this is precisely the outcome I seek?"

Oh, so he was just gonna ignore what she said, then? That was so like him. Sigrid loved him, but Elijah could do "condescending and holier-than-thou" better than anyone. He had a way of making you feel small and foolish, just by disregarding what you said, or speaking to you in a certain tone, or making a single well-placed comment. But this was too important for Elijah to brush off. Sigrid took a deep breath. "You're not listening to me, brother," she said with forced calm, turning to face him once more. The wind rustled through the trees once more as she moved, lifting leaves and her hair and the edges of her billowy green shirt sleeves. "I have no problem at all with waking our siblings. I love them dearly, and if I knew where they were I would fly there at once to free them myself." Sigrid stared into Elijah's eyes as she spoke, imbuing each word with sincerity. "What I take issue with, is you trying to make this a moment in which our entire family turns against Niklaus as one." She paused to gauge his reaction. Elijah seemed surprised at her words, but made no move to dispute them, which was confirmation enough for Sigrid. She continued, "When our siblings wake, they will be rightly furious with our brother. You are already angry with him as well, and over the course of this conversation you have sought to sway me to your way of thinking. I know you, Elijah. You would have us abandon him to go live happily together. You would have that be his punishment. And that, I cannot abide."

Elijah considered her. "What would you have me do?" he queried. "Surely you cannot expect me or our siblings to simply forgive and forget, to live as one happy family after all he has done?"

Sigrid ran a hand through her hair, frustrated. "I know that, Elijah, I know! I agree that Nik can't just get away with this, but how would up and abandoning him teach him a lesson? Do you truly imagine that turning our backs on him would somehow make things better? That he would allow that in the first place?" She paced about the forest floor anxiously as she spoke, gesticulating wildly. "It would only increase his mania, his paranoia! I mean honestly, Elijah, can't you see that he's-that he's suffering?" she practically exploded, the trees around them creaking and groaning as the wind whipped up to greater speeds. How was she the only one who could see Niklaus' pain?

She whirled toward Elijah, but the stricken look on his face took the wind from her sails. All the hot air left her at once, and she sat down, hard, right there on the ground. She pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her face in them, hair falling around her like a shroud. Disregarding his pristine suit, Elijah sat next to her in the dirt without hesitation, wrapping a strong arm around her shoulders and tucking her into his side. They sat in silence for a moment. Quietly, Sigrid spoke again, face still pressed to her legs. She knew Elijah could hear her just fine. "He's not been the same since what happened in New Orleans. What happened with Father and-and Marcellus. . ." She sighed and sat up, only to immediately curl into Elijah's side, wrapping her arms around him. "I don't think he feels safe anymore. Maybe he never really did. But New Orleans was the closest thing we had to a home, it was the place he felt secure enough to settle down and start-start piecing our family back together again, and when it was torn away he just. . . Norns, you didn't see him, Lijah. Not right after. He was-" She cut herself off. Nik had confided in her then, and she didn't intend to betray his confidence, not even in his defense. "I just don't think he feels safe now. Not from Father, or from us, or with us. He's not secure in our love for him, or his love for us, or whether we can be trusted, and quite frankly why should he be? The way we've treated each other over the years? And that's not just on him, Elijah, you know it's not." She squeezed his waist pointedly.

There was a long pause before Elijah sighed, his whole body moving with the force of it. Sigrid smiled a little. That was his "capitulating to a younger sibling" sigh. She would recognize it anywhere. "You are right," he murmured to the top of her head, "Of course you are right. I love Niklaus as dearly as you do, sister, and we made a vow to one another all those years ago."

"Always and forever," Sigrid chimed in, almost automatically.

Elijah smiled. "Indeed. Family is power. I should not have forgotten that in my anger."

Happy again (Norns, not even a full 48 hours with her family and she was as mercurial as Niklaus; she'd forgotten how exhausting they could be), Sigrid swung up onto her knees, rotating her body to face Elijah as she went. His arm fell from around her shoulders, and she grabbed his hand to clasp between both of hers before he could pull it away. His fingers and palm dwarfed her own easily. "The others will be furious when we wake them up," she began, "and they have every right to be. Once we're all together again, we can discuss a better way to get back at Nik for what he's done. But if we're ever going to fix this, we have to help each other, not hurt each other. That's what got us into this mess in the first place."

Elijah quirked an eyebrow at her, lips slowly curling upwards. "'When we wake them up?'" he quoted.

Sigrid grinned imperiously, dimples on full display and a devilish gleam in her eyes. In that moment, she was sure she looked more like Nik than ever. "Well, since you've finally come around to my way of thinking," she teased gently, "I don't see why we can't concoct a scheme together." She leapt nimbly to her feet as Elijah chuckled. Smiling more sincerely, she stuck out a hand to help him up. Humoring her, he took it and allowed her to assist him. "Come on Elijah," she cheered. "Let's orchestrate a little family reunion!"