08: It's a Cold, Cruel, Harsh Reality.
As if to add to the growing list of issues, Liz had called Damon because the search party found something. While Elena packed some of her things in her decision to return to Mystic Falls temporarily Damon ventured to the quarry. The divers had retrieved the safe they intended on putting Silas in, but not Silas nor Stefan laid inside. Instead, a bloody corpse stared with a horrified face up at them. If Stefan had been in the box for three months he was starving, and still hungry.
When Damon returned to the boarding house with Elena they found Riel still unconscious in one of the spare rooms but no Zina or Katherine. Somehow, Damon just wasn't surprised in the slightest. He didn't even make an attempt to lay down. Just stayed up desperately trying to track down Nova, Saskia, or some kind of lead. It was nearing dawn when Elena awoke with a start down the hall.
"I had a dream about Stefan," she told the elder Salvatore when she appeared in his doorway. Still Damon didn't budge but he acknowledged her. "It was more than just a pit in my stomach this time, though. It was real. It was like I was there with him."
At last, Damon sighed and turned around. "Fine, tell me. No chance it's a coincidence at this point."
"It was just so vivid. I saw Stefan walking out of this bar. It had a red awning and this broken neon sign, and he was screaming in pain." The look on her face could have broken his heart if he didn't have twenty other problems to juggle.
"Well, should I go check in the attic, see if there's a crystal ball? Maybe you can conjure up an address."
"Route 29," came the ever irritating voice of Katherine Pierce. "Joe's Bar."
Damon clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth before even looking at her. "And where the hell did you and your partner in crime vanish off to?"
Katherine smirked arrogantly. "Errands. She's off on one right now. I wanna find Stefan just as much as you do," she looked to Elena when she spoke, "and not just because I don't wanna be a pawn that you can trade off for his life. I care about him—I always have. And since we've been having the same dream… makes me think you care about him just as much."
Tiny boxes, Zina reminded herself as she forced her composure. Shove all your emotions in tiny boxes. Maybe I'll get confused with a ghost at first. That would be quite amusing.
The party was littered corner to corner with vampires. Plenty, both male and female, eyed her with lust as she sauntered in. Her raven hair remained straightened just past her shoulder blades with a black and silver mask hiding her dark eyes. Silver heels tapped across the ground almost melodically beneath her gown. It was all white lace with sleeves to continue hiding the scars on her arms. A slit dipped down her chest seductively where a gold necklace with a lapis lazuli stone laid shimmering against her pale chest. Similarly to Nova's the metal twined into a Z on top of the stone to hold it in place. The vampires weren't certain what to make of her, having never seen or even smelled her before. She was unlike their own kind and even the Original family.
"Bloody hell," Rebekah muttered when she laid eyes on the ravenette in white with lapis lazuli around her neck. "That's not one of Marcel's inner circle, is she?"
Klaus glanced down half heartedly at first. The all white and lapis lazuli threw him off, forcing him to do a double take. His eyes widened as flashes of Zina Vasile in her white gown and her heart in his hand crossed his mind. She stopped in the dead center of the room staring up at him directly. Thought he couldn't see her eyes he could feel her gaze piercing daggers onto him. "No," he finally answered briskly, unable to tear his eyes away from the girl below. "But I think he might have a ghost problem."
"Niklaus Mikaelson," she called with a thick Romanian accent which pushed the crowd further away around her. "I need to have a word with you and Daciana immediately."
Yeah, that sounded good, Zina tried to make herself feel better. That's some gutsy shit Nova probably would have done.
Rebekah swore her brother's eye twitched. "These bloody Vasiles are going to haunt me for the eternity," he muttered. "Sister, won't you go check on Lethia please?"
"And miss whatever this?" She gestured between the ravenette below and Klaus. "Absolutely not. I will go and find her so she can witness this with me so don't you dare do anything worth missing."
Klaus descended the stairs slowly as Rebekah dashed off to find Lethia. He could feel the gaze of the ravenette following his every motion and breath. It couldn't be possible, could it? She had the same figure, though her hair was a bit shorter and straighter. Modernization, he supposed. The white lace gown had looked ravishing on her; much better than the one she died in the first time. The necklace had been a nice touch though. Did she always have it or was it something new? Did it have a purpose or was she just trying to look flashy for the party?
"I was quite sure little Bonnie Bennett closed the door to the Other Side," he began slowly.
"Where is Daciana?" She countered boldly.
"Why is her name in your mouth? Go on and show yourself then since you're brave enough to come directly to me."
Zina swiftly removed the mask from her eyes and looked up at him. Her already dark eyes had been accented with smokey shadow and black eyeliner. "As much as I would love to actually hash it out with you, Niklaus, I am here with a purpose."
"Whatever is happening between Silas and the Other Side-"
Without warning, Zina's fist collided suddenly with Klaus' gut, knocking the wind out of him and bringing him to his knees before her. He looked up with wide eyes when he caught his breath. "It's a lot more than that, Klaus. If you want a fight and to try and kill me again after this is over then you go right ahead. I have much more frightening monsters that need to be put down immediately. Where is Daciana?"
"I'm here, Zina," came the melodic Lithuanian accent. Daciana walked up behind Zina in a navy gown with Rebekah and Lethia flanking her. "What is it that's so dire it's given my brother another opportunity to end your life?"
"Cain," she answered quickly which earned Daciana's attention immediately. "Cain, Saskia, and Silas. They are going to unleash darkness without even realizing it."
"You ever play the "What if" game?" Silas spoke half playfully into his phone. "When you're calcified for two thousand years you learn to entertain yourself with these little brain teasers."
Nadia sighed on the other end. "Look, Silas, this phone is prepaid and I don't have a lot of minutes."
"Oh, no, no, no. It's really easy. I'll go first. You know how much I hate Travelers, so to prove your allegiance to me, you killed your Traveler friend, Gregor. But what is it was all an act? What if he's still alive?"
"You saw him bleed out. You buried his body yourself."
"But what if Matt's tacky ring brought him back to life?"
"If this is the game, it's boring."
"If we're gonna work together, I need to know that you're on my side. So, find out if Matt Donovan's still alive, and kill him."
"Fine. Say Matt is still alive. What if he could help us to find Katherine Pierce? She's still your priority, is she not?"
"Yes, she is. So, get the information that you need, rip that ring off Matt's little finger, and make sure he doesn't cheat death again unless you don't want to see Katia ever again."
Nadia watched Matt working the bar at the Mystic Grill. She already had her own agenda. "I'll take care of it."
For days Nova had been internally screaming as she slowly rotted in her little hole. The starvation drove her to rage but she couldn't even move. She hadn't known how long it had been before she was being dragged out. Days? Weeks? Months? She couldn't tell time anymore. Her vision was too blurry as she was dragged across dirt and rocks. Nova was nothing more than dead weight just watching what looked like forest go by.
Her time in the hole seemed shorter than it took for whoever was dragging her around. She could just barely make out Saskia ahead of her with the chain in her frail hands. She almost looked like a ghost; pale white and dressed all in black. Saskia's hair was a disaster, knotted and sticking up in places. Her black dress was torn and frayed at the hem. Hell, she seemed to swim in the fabric from having lost so much weight. Saskia Vasile was dying without the Mark of Cain mirrored onto her. At long last Saskia came to a stop with Nova on the ground at her feet. Across from her stood a young man donning a sweater vest and lab coat.
"Nova Vasile for your dhampir research." Saskia's voice echoed quietly and raspy into the dark.
The man took a vial out of his pocket and held it up. "I should warn you though, I've noticed it's a very sporadic and rambunctious gene."
"Are you trying to say it will not work?" She hissed.
"I suppose it depends on how desperate you are to survive."
Saskia actually hesitated for the quickest of seconds before tossing Nova to the man's feet. "Let Augustine see if they can find out what is so special about this beast. She is not my problem anymore."
He chuckled rather darkly before handing off the vial to Saskia. "Whitmore House thanks you again for your generous donation to science, Miss Vasile. See you again."
Nova watched Saskia vanish into the shadows before she was hauled into a van. Her head hit the metal floor and bounced though she felt nothing. Her emerald eyes were cold and unfeeling. There was almost no life left to them.
Daciana immediately grabbed Zina by the wrist and hauled her far off into the back away from prying vampire ears. Naturally her two siblings and Lethia followed suit. "You have a lot of nerve rising from the dead and speaking their names in this city," she snarled when they could no longer even hear the music of the gala.
Zina brushed off her dress before crossing her arms and standing tall against the Mikaelson-Vasile. She noted that her heels were significantly shorter to Daciana's stilettos and yet they were evenly matched in height. "Listen, there isn't a damned one of us that want to speak even the name we were given at birth, but none of us have a choice anymore. Your father is murdering murderers until he clears all the damage he evidently had done and that happens to include all of us for who the hell knows why. And don't get me started on what Saskia has been up to the last thousand or so years, but all she's done is play into Remiel's plots."
The elder Vasile grit her teeth and broke eye contact with her ancestor. Klaus knew well it was a sign that she knew something unpleasant but painfully related. His lips pursed into a tight line before he put a hand on her shoulder. "Speak up, sister. Your actions will not be what puts us in the crosshairs."
She looked to Lethia who had a hand on her small but growing belly, amber eyes filled with worry. Heaving a hefty sigh, Daciana proceeded to speak the truth at least she knew of. "My birth giver, Saskia Vasile, is, was, and will always be nothing but a selfish monster. And she is no different than her angel mother Remiel. Cassia and I… we should have been born naturally in the spring of of 262 BC."
Klaus, Rebekah, Lethia, and Zina all stared with eyes as wide as possible and jaws slightly agape.
When Nova finally started to regain consciousness and her eyes cracked open a blinding light scorched them shut. She could hear a small handful of people talking but could never make out the difference in voices or what they were saying. She felt herself strapped down to a cold, metal table with both leather restraints and chains. An IV came poking out of her right arm with a steady dose of Deadly Nightshade pumping through her veins to keep her weak.
Someone hovered above her and began pulling and poking at her eyelids. They forced them open so Nova's pupils would constrict against the light before a long, thin needle was pressed into the emerald hue of her iris. Strands of her hair were pulled right out of her scalp. Vials upon vials of her blood were taken. They even cut her in random places in all sorts of ways to see how long it took for her heal and how she would especially hooked up to Deadly Nightshade.
How long had she been there? Had it only been hours? Maybe days? Could it have breached into weeks? Those testing and poking her started to wonder why she wouldn't react to anything. Usually they can switch out for another test subject but they just went to town on Nova Vasile while they had the chance. She didn't move, she didn't scream, she didn't even cry. She just laid there on their metal table staring up with no life or emotion left to her eyes. It was like she had no fight left in her.
The joke was on them though, wasn't it? Did they even know her humanity was off? All the while they poked and prodded and tested Nova, every inch of her being including testing her regentive abilities, she laid there and silently seethed. Nova had no time or regard for tears and sorrow. All that was left was a powerful, burning, and growing hatred. She thought of Audra and Lena Vasile in 1958. She thought of Niklaus terrorizing her. She thought of Zina's miraculous return from the dead. She thought of little human Zarya and her struggle to remain both human and alive. And she thought of Damon and his endless search for Katherine Pierce.
Katherine Pierce.
How Nova positively loathed even the name. She thought back to 1864 at one point, wondering how Katherine became such an enemy in her life. Felix and Alina raised her to hate the Petrova name for crimes against the clan. What crimes were they though? She had always wondered. They had to have known it was Katerina Petrova to adopt their second born child, but what was it that sent Katerina against the Vasiles centuries prior? And was it because of Zina that Katherine felt the need to ruin everything in Nova's life? Why did she even take an interest in Damon? All Katherine ever wanted was Stefan. Yet everytime Nova even began to feel happy or comfortable with Damon at her side, there Katherine was to take it all away.
Elena's face haunted her then. A Petrova doppelganger. Face like Katherine but the personality of a frightened bunny. Nova's first and only successful progeny and what a waste she turned out to be. College? Really? Elena was so naive. If it wasn't for her infatuation with Stefan then Nova probably could have avoided most of the turmoil she was met with. What is it about that stupid face that keeps dragging the Salvatores around through the rocky mud?
Remiel, Lucifer, the Winchester brothers; it was a wonder Zarya wasn't dead or much less human yet. How foolish she was to keep poking around if she didn't eventually want fangs of her own. Nova felt wrath towards each and every person that crossed her mind for one reason or another. They were all so weak, weren't they? Living based on emotion and care for others. She thought that was what she needed, what she craved - the love of and to reciprocate love to another. But love truly was a vampire's greatest weakness and she was not weak. No one would come for her and she didn't want anyone to. Nova was done relying on others who could only feel so deeply and act based upon that.
It had been a straight 56 hours of testing before Nova was released, hauled down a hallway, and tossed onto the floor of a cell. She laid face down for hours before she finally came to. The numbness was slowly leaving her body; her eyes were struggling to focus. When they finally did she found something seemingly engraved into the flesh of her wrist. It was small enough to fit across her rather thin wrist, likely done with the help of some Deadly Nightshade, but forever carved into her skin regardless.
21052.
"For years my mother pleaded to be Remiel's vessel as Runa's body wore thin," Daciana gravely explained. "And each time Remiel told her she wasn't good enough; she wasn't strong enough. Every time Saskia returned she was stronger than the last. She had killed more in her wake. Yet it still wasn't good enough for Remiel no matter how weak she became."
"What more must I do to prove myself to you?!" Saskia yelled at the archangel, two severed heads dropping from her hands. "I am stronger than any who dare cross my path! I can be your vessel!"
It started off as a tiny snicker, but quickly erupted into maniacal laughter. Remiel's dark eyes stared down tauntingly at the child she raised. "You are still a naive child," she hissed darkly to Saskia. "Those ideals will get you no further than what you have already achieved. You desire true power by being my vessel? You require true power first. The only reason Runa survived and has been safely catatonic in this head is because of this." She whipped back her long, black sleeve and showed Saskia the mirrored Mark of Cain for the very first time.
"Remiel told her that the day she was born Lucifer transferred his Mark to his first Knight of Hell - Cain. If my mother wanted eternal glory she had to begin by getting the Mark mirrored onto her flesh just as Remiel had done. It took her some time but she made it her goal to find Cain and so she did."
"Cain wouldn't have just suckered up to a pretty face though," Lethia commented. "Would he?"
"No," Zina replied stiffly with her gaze still on Daciana. "Cain murdered his own brother and took the Mark in an effort to protect Abel and keep him from Hell. He wandered as the Father of Murder to atone for murdering his brother no matter what the reasoning was. He wouldn't have given in so easily."
"And he did not," Daciana snapped sharply. "Saskia taunted him before showing him just how capable of murder she was. She assured him she was not innocent, which she never was, and proved not even he could kill her then by forcing him to shove the First Blade through her gut. Once she proved her worth he opted to keep her around. A couple of centuries of murder later and the Father and Mother of Murder discover that they're going to be a father and mother for real."
Saskia's countenance had never looked more human upon receiving the news. A witch, a shaman, and human doctor had all told her the exact same thing. Beside her Cain was also reeling. Was it even an option? Was it possible by nature's laws even?
"Let's tell even nature to go fuck itself," he offered at last, his lips twitching towards a smile.
"Children?" Saskia returned with disbelief in her tone. "Do either of us really know what to do about children? We… we end lives, not create them!"
"Perhaps this could be a new start for us, my love. A whole family of murder no one would dare trifle with. We can raise our children however we see fit, can we not?"
It started to spark an interest in her, but one daunting question remained: "What would they even be, khuba? Human? Angel? Demon?"
He took her hands in his and kissed them gently. "Does it matter so long as they can fight, kill, and survive?"
That had been something they actually had never considered. Saskia Vasile was a nephilim - half human, half angel; Cain was a Knight of Hell - a demon. The mirrored Mark on Saskia is what caused the two girls to be the beginning of the Cursed Twins, but had they even been born human?
"My beast of a sister and I were not even born," Daciana clarified before continuing. She got the feel of the room and saw the looks on their faces. First she choked back a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding before finally telling them things she had never even told the Mikaelsons a thousand years ago. "In April, towards the end of the pregnancy, they found out that Cassia and I had been siphoning off of our mother."
Lethia's breath caught in her throat. "Wh-what were you siphoning…?"
"Anything and everything essentially. We would take turns between her human nature and her angel grace until it wasn't good enough for us anymore. We weakened her severely and she was doomed to die in delivery. Our father, however, was far too determined to allow that to happen. He found a powerful clan of witches in the area and went straight to the leader. She told him that his only option if he was so desperate for his abomination children to survive was to allow the true monster birthing them to rightfully die on the table."
"And let me guess," spoke Zina grimly, "it wasn't enough for Cain?"
Daciana shook her head. "Of course not. So when a rogue member of the coven approached him outside with a better offer he was much more inclined to take it."
"Freeze them in time? What madness are you trying to sell me, witch?" Cain demanded with the First Blade at the ready.
The hooded witch held her hands up in defense. "My methods were too… extreme for my coven. And so they outed me. But you are not in a position to be playing things safely, are you Cain? It will take three properly timed celestial events for me to have such power to do what I need, but how convenient for you that one is happening right around the time your precious daughters are due?"
Cain hesitated and thought for a moment before deciding to hear the woman out. "It is simple, really," she assured him. "While your wife is still pregnant, I place a powerful spell upon her and her womb that will stop time from affecting her. Her body will not age or decay any further. We remove the darling children from her body as quickly as we can so I can extend the spell to them because it will not work outside of their mother anymore but infants need their mothers, do they not? While we await the next celestial event I can heal Saskia's body from the trauma of the siphoning so she is near perfect health when we awake her. Then the same to your children and everyone gets to live happily ever after."
He was skeptical listening to the witch. It sounded just too ideal but too easily messed up at the same time. "How can I trust that you would follow through with all of this? What do you get out of doing this?"
"She got more out of it than he knew," Daciana admitted. "It was no accident that she found him - it was on Remiel's whim. The witch was the former leader of the same coven Cain tried talking to but she was ran out because her methods were deemed unnatural and destructive towards the balance of nature."
"I don't suppose you know which coven it happened to be?" Rebekah asked curiously.
"Let me take a shot in the dark," Zina frowned. "The Moores?"
The Lithuanian nodded solemnly. "They had began rising to power when she threatened the well being of it all. My father agreed without his wife's consent or knowledge and, as soon as the contractions began, the stars or whatever aligned for the witch to do her spell. She put Saskia under and quickly had a likely brainwashed doctor oversee the removal of Cassia and I. As soon as we touched the air, just before we could cry, she spelled us too. Frozen in time for centuries to come."
"So your birth family is more in shambles than you led us to believe," Klaus commented at last. "Why is it I feel that's not even the climax of the story?"
"Because it's not… a couple of centuries later, shortly before the next rumored celestial event to awaken my mother, the witch vanished without a trace."
"What the bloody hell do you mean she vanished?" Rebekah exclaimed.
Daciana shrugged. "She was just gone one day. It sent my father on a spiral. He hid hers and our bodies somewhere he deemed safe and took off to do what he did best: murder. The witch then returned when she needed to and proceeded to wake my mother up from her spell as promised. When she did, though, it unleashed all the years the mirrored Mark of Cain was left on her arm just burning. She was frozen in time with nothing more than the desire to slaughter humanity and she woke up with that feeling one hundred fold. She left my mother a map and some pages from her grimoire seeing the dark rage that exploded within her and vanished again."
"Coward," both Zina and Klaus muttered before giving one another hateful glares.