If there was one thing that Rebekah hated it was wasted time. And she had wasted a lot of time. Dealing with Ripper Stefan could be so annoying sometimes. She had to constantly stop and clean up his messes because the last thing that they needed was for someone to find out that vampires were real. And Stefan was making that too easy for the humans to figure out. But other than that, she had made her way to Greece with Stefan only to find that no one was there and then getting a call from Nik telling her that they were making their home base in New Orleans.
God above why did they not tell her that when she was on the plane to Greece? Why did they wait for her to drag Stefan and three bodies to the fucking house where Klaus was staying? She hated her brothers.
When she reached the home where Nik had made his home base, Rebekah was in a foul mood. She had cleaned up seven messes on her way here and had to compel so many people that her head hurt. She sighed and then made her way into the Abattoir. The hulking building had not chance since the last time she had seen the place. It was heavy and the decorations had long since fallen out of style but the place was still home to her.
As she walked in Stefan took a look around behind her. Compelled humans were grabbing their bags and lugging them into the house. Rebekah smiled as she made her way into the home that they had made for themselves. Together.
"Gosh this place has so many memories," Rebekah said as she turned to take in the place.
"You lived here?" Stefan asked.
"Yes, for a time. We helped build this city and we ruled it for a while. Before we got bored and decided to make our way to Chicago," Rebekah said.
"Where we found Stefan the Rippah of Monterrey tearing Chicago a new one," Klaus said. He was walking dow the steps with a slow gait. His hands held behind his back. But Rebekah knew better than anyone what that pose meant. Klaus was planning and plotting and he would make sure that they did not lose. Rebekah frowned at her brother.
"You couldn't tell me that you were going to New Orleans. I flew all the way to Greece for nothing," Rebekah pouted.
"At least you got some frequent flyer miles out of it, love. Now tell me how you got Stefan to follow you all the way here?" Klaus said never talking his eyes off of the ripper behind her. Rebekah swung herself to the side, standing between the two men. From her vantage point she could see them both and she smiled.
"I found him making a mess in Paris. I wanted to see if the Stefan that I knew was still in there."
"Well we will need him because we are at war," Klaus said. "We will need all hands on deck."
"Kol said that there was a problem, but he did not go into detail over the phone. What is the problem that we are facing?" Stefan asked.
"Witches," a voice pitched in from above. Sliding down the bannister came Marcel. He was still as handsome as the day he was turned. Still youthful and glowing. He walked over to Stefan and stretched out a hand. "Marcel Gerard."
"Stefan Salvatore." The two shook hands and Rebekah smiled. Oh, she could imagine being trapped against the two of them. One like the sun and the other the moon. It would be glorious. Before she got too caught up in her fantasies Klaus clapped his hands.
"It would be utter if we did this debriefing in another room. Somewhere not out in the open," Klaus said. He guided them all into one of the sitting rooms in the Abattoir and they all settled down around the room. Klaus leaned on the mantle, looking into the fireplace.
"Marcel is right that we are fighting witches. We are fighting Expression witches," Klaus said. Rebekah rolled her eyes. Every couple decades or sot, Expression witches cropped up. They thought they were something and tried to resurrect that Silas guy, but Kol always dealt with it. She did not see the reason why the whole family had been called.
"But why were we called?" Rebekah asked.
"Because dear sister," Kol said as he barged into the room with Rose in tow. "This witch has decided to make everyone of us her enemy by recruiting other witches." Kol threw himself into a chair with no care in the world. He smiled at his sister who snarled at him. "You know she attacked us in Greece."
"So that explains the bodies we found," Stefan said.
"Still does not explain why we are here. Every so often and Expression witch comes around that thinks that they are the herald of a new age and Kol deals with then just fine. Why do we have to get involved."
Klaus swallowed. She had never seen her brother like this. He looked as though he was holding in words from vomiting out of him. His face was pale and god, she could even see some of the sweat beading on his face.
"They took Elijah, and Finn's coffins," Kol said. "And they took something else too. Something Klaus had been keeping from us all this time."
Rebekah turned her eyes back to her brother. "Well what is it? What is it that you have been keeping from us?" The longer that they waited the longer that the fire inside Rebekah burned brighter and brighter. She hated it when her brother's kept things from her. She may be the youngest but she was still an Original and just as dangerous as them.
"What is it?"
"They stole mother's body as well," Klaus said the words as a mumble. She turned and looked at her brother and then at Kol.
"What?" she asked.
"They took mother's body," Klaus said a little louder this time. Rebekah opened her mouth to say something else, but then the explosions started.
Huge flaming chunks of what seemed to be rock bursted through the windows and exploded in the room that they were in. Stefan ducked under a table and watched as the ball that entered into the room, hovered over the ground. It shuddered and shook and then exploded like a neutron star. The light that burst from it was liquid and it splashed on his skin.
It burned making him cry out. It was like getting burned with daylight. They were throwing balls of actual sunlight at them. Stefan's mind could barely wrap around the thought before another ball was sent into the room.
"They know we're in here!" Stefan shouted. They raced out from the room, covering their heads the whole time. Once out of the room they raced down the stairs, but the witches were waiting for them there. Stefan stopped on the stairs, making the other stop with him.
Standing front and center of the witches was Katherine. Each witch and warlock stood behind her with balls of sunlight in their hands. Just waiting to be thrown at the vampires. Katherine smiled at them.
"Did you miss me, Klaussy-poo?" Katherine asked.
"I knew I should have killed you when I got the chance," Klaus growled from somewhere behind Stefan. "You were worth nothing but your blood."
"Well you had your chance and blew it. I will make sure that I never make the same mistakes that you did. Aim!" The witches cocked their hands back and everyone on the stairs flinched. They what was coming next.
"Fire!"
The sunlight balls hurtling towards them and they all jumped from the stairs. Stefan did not know where he was going to land as long as the sunlight did not touch him. Stefan landed on his feet and looked up. He let his fangs dropped an raced towards the witches with his vampire speed. He catch one and pushed her against the wall digging into her neck. She cried out, but Stefan slapped a hand over her mouth.
He was too absorbed in feeding, in enjoying the blood that he felt a sunlight ball hit his back. He let loose a wail of pain and shoved the witch away from him. He turned around as he felt his flesh knit itself back together. A warlock stood behind him, gathering sunlight into another ball to throw at him.
"So this is Expression magic," Stefan said as he straightened out. The skin of his back had knit itself back together. The pain was nothing more than a dull ache at this point. "You know I never heard of Expression magic until today."
"Well you will have the honor to die by it," the warlock said.
"You know I have some neat tricks too," Stefan said. He zoomed behind the warlock and dug his hand into his chest. The warlock cried out but Stefan did not stop digging. He leaned close as he finally reached his destination. "Watch me make a heart disappear."
He ripped out the witches heart and smiled when the body plopped to the ground. He turned around and could see that the rest of them had thinned out the witches considerably. He turned to look at Katherine but the woman looked none the worse for wear and she did not seem worried.
"Bring as many witches as you want, Katherine," Stefan called out to the vampire. "We'll just keep killing them."
"Oh, I didn't just bring witches," Katherine said. Still surrounding her there was a group of people. In a matter of moments, the sounds of cracking bones and screams filled the air. Stefan watched amazing and the bones and skin of the people folded in on themselves. Fur sprouted out of their skin and then they snarled.
"Werewolves?" Stefan asked in disbelief.
"Oh yeah. If Plan A doesn't work go to Plan B. Ta-ta, team Original," Katherine said. She sauntered out of the room and in that moment Stefan was reminded of when she used to tease him and how different that walk was from Elena's.
At the very thought of Elena it gave rise to the first emotion that he had felt in decades. Anger. It was boiling hot and made his skin itch, but he still remembered that night. The night that Elena died and all the light was sucked from his life. He wanted nothing more than to reach out to Katherine and make her suffer the way Elena did when she died.
Elena was an innocent and she did not deserve to die by Klaus's had. And Stefan had done everything in his power to prevent her death and it was not enough. All because he had trusted Katherine and her plans.
"Katherine!" Stefan called out. He used his vampire speed to race towards her but he was intercepted by a wolf. He tried to duck left or right but the wolf followed after him. Katherine was getting away, being swallowed up by the sunlight of the day. She was getting away. "Katherine!"
"Oh Stefan you were always my favorite," Katherine said before she disappeared. Stefan charged again but was only meant by fur. He wrestled with the beast before he was toppled. Another wolf nipped at his ankles and he cried out.
As the wolves bit at him he watched as Katherine's silhouette was swallowed up by the sunlight. Like a demon being accepted into heaven. Stefan cried out as the wolf got his fangs deep into his skin.
"Don't let them bite you," Rebekah called out the futile demand.
"A little late on the warning!" Stefan called back. He pulled one wolf off of him and slammed it against one of the pillars, hearing a snap and a sharp yip of pain. The other wolf, the one with his fangs in Stefan's ankle, snarled and pulled his fangs out.
It left a wide gaping wound on his leg but Stefan wasn't worried. It would heal. Stefan rose to his feet wobbly. "Come here you overgrown mutt," he said.
People say that when you die your whole life is supposed to flash before your eyes. That never happened for her. All she remembered was the pain in her final moments. The sting in her neck as her blood was slowly but surely drained away from her body. The feeling of her fingers getting stiff; of her heart beating in her chest, trying tp pump blood, but there being nothing to pump. She thought of her brother in those final moments and her friends. They were everything to her and she would be leaving them behind. And she did. She did leave them behind.
But when the air hit her lungs in those moments, it burned and made her feel more alive than it ever did before. She looked around the room, it was decorated like a hotel room. It was a hotel room. The window was open that was letting in a hot and humid breeze that she could not withstand. She rose from the bed and promptly fell to the ground. Her bones were nothing more than gelatin.
She crawled over to the window and pulled it shut before crawling back to the bed. She pulled herself up and then rest herself on the bed. She sighed. Her arms ached from crawling, but she needed to move needed to see into her room.
Outside of her room, someone was watching Tv. She could hear the laugh track and the hum that only older televisions gave off. She slid off the bed and crawled towards the door. Opening it was a hassle. She hit her hand against it once, twice, and it was the third time that it swung open. The door luckily opened outwards, so she simply had to push the door in order to get out. She crawled along the floor and she sighed as she saw the back of the couch and someone sitting there.
"Hello," she croaked out. Her voice was not her own. It was worn and tired with disuse. How long had it been since she was last able to use her own voice. How long since she spoke to someone? "Hello?"
The person turned around and smiled at her. "Now, darling let's get you off the floor." She rose and walked over to her. The woman had kind eyes and her hair was in blonde waves. She was pretty and young. She could not have been older than thirty-five. She smiled at the lady.
"Thank you," she croaked out again. The woman smiled at her and settled her down at the couch. She turned her eyes towards the television and saw that she was watching an old rerun of I Love Lucy. "Like this."
"I do too. I like al the problems that get started over the silliest reasons. It really puts life into perspective," the woman said.
She looked at the woman for a moment, but then the woman sighed. "And it appears that I have forgotten my manners too. I'm Esther."
"Esther," she said. She dragged out the word, her tongue flopping around in her mouth as she pronounced the words. Esther smiled at her and nodded her head.
"That's right sweetheart and you're—"
"Everything is going to plan!" A man walked into the room and clapped his hands. She did not know this man and sunk into the couch. He was big and loud. Scary. She did not want to interact with him.
Esther seemed to take notice of this and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Don't worry it is just a man. Just someone telling us about our plans."
She turned and looked at man. Plans? What plans? She did not have any plans before—
"Can't you see that you're scaring her? Tell me what I need to know and leave," Esther said in a harsh tone. She shuddered. She would never want Esther to be mad at her. She was scary when she was mad.
"Uh, yes. Sorry. Katherine said that everything is going to plan. She was able to drop off the payload and—"
"Payload? Speak plainly boy, I do not have time to decipher your coded messages," Esther said.
"She was able to drop off the woods and the grab the thing that the witch needed," the man said. Esther nodded her head and waved a hand at him. It was obvious that he was dismissed.
The man huffed and turned and walked from the room. She giggled. It was kind of funny. A big, loud man like him was leaving all because she waved her hand. How amusing that was. She sighed and snuggled deeper into Esther's side.
"Oh you like that. Nothing beats cuddles with a mother," Esther said. She wondered who her children were. And that got her thinking about her own mother. Where was she? And why was she not here? Why was she along with Esther. And that name… Katherine. It sparked something inside of her.
She did not know if it was a good thing or a bad thing though. Katherine was an anomaly. The name sparked something that could not be named. She tilted her head and watched the show.
"You want to watch the show swelling? We can watch," Esther said. She nodded her head and watched. The two of them watched I Love Lucy in silence together. She giggled at the parts that she liked and frowned at the parts she did not. It was fun and nice and no big, loud man entered the room again.
"Now swelling, don't you think it is a little unfair that you know my name, but I don't know yours?"
She nodded. Yes, that was unfair. Very unfair. It was not right. She wracked her brain. What was her name again? She had a name she knew that for sure, but what was it again? Esther patted her forehead, smoothing out her furrowed brow.
"No need to think too hard sweetie—"
"Elena. My name is Elena." she croaked out again. That was her name Elena. And it all came flooding back.
Author's Note: I will get to writing more. Make sure to leave comments and tell me what you all think!