A/N: Okay I'm an idiot I forgot about Finn and Kol in the last chapter. Damn! This, hopefully will be the only diversion from canon (as we know it so far).

To answer a quick question: The Carolines (Lyanna, Hannah, Anne, more to come) are reincarnated spirits. They look exactly like Caroline, only different hair color. They aren't exactly doppelgangers because doppelgangers only look alike. They don't have the same personality. However, the Carolines will all have similar personalities or qualities of present day Caroline. Some of these qualities (insecurities, loyalty, general awesomeness) will be more present in some of the girls that others. But all will be very Caroline like in parts of their personalities.

I added a brief timeline at the beginning of the story that will be updated every chapter. The Family Tree is done. I will post it on a tumblr page by next chapter and I'll give you the link, in case you'd like to give it a gander, then.

Thank you to everyone that has read, reviewed, favorited, followed and recommended this story to others. You guys are wonderful.

If you could envision
The meaning of a tragedy...oooh
You might be
Surprised to hear it's you and me

Tragedy Christina Perri

Venice

1114 AD

"How could you be so stupid!?" She could still hear his voice ringing in her ears.

By the time Kol and Finn had arrived for the wedding, the bodies in the old house by the canal were long forgotten, rodents and bugs picking at their remains. The only one preserved, handled with care, was Alexander.

Weeping, she had begged Elijah to help her dismount him from the wall.

"Leave him!" Niklaus shouted, "Let him rot."

But Rebekah couldn't. She had waited instead for Niklaus to leave heading back to the country to meet Kol coming in from the east and Finn from the north. When Elijah had refused, she went to the one person she knew would understand: Finn.

Mayhaps it was because he had Sage that he understood. Protective of her, he purposely didn't allow her to accompany him when he returned to his family. He refused to bring her around Niklaus.

Finn was perhaps the most sensitive of all her siblings, the only moral compass they had left.

"How did you intend to wed him, Rebekah?"

Her hands were covered in mud and coagulated blood as she pushed dirt into the small hole she had made in the church graveyard. Past dark, they'd carried him from the canal home to the church where she would have been wed in. The entire time, Finn had been silent, until he could take no more.

"What?"

Dirt was smudged across her cheek, sticking to her drying trail of tears, blond hair ratted and wild.

Gently, he tried again, "How did you intend to wed him, Rebekah? Eventually he would have known."

"There was a cure. He said he had a cure, which could make us human again."

"How could you be so sure?"

Niklaus's voice, "How could you be so stupid!?"

"I wasn't. I wanted to believe."

"And Niklaus wanted to make sure it was never found?" It was a rhetorical question; of course Niklaus wanted the hunters destroyed and the cure forgotten.

"Tell me about this cure." When Rebekah did, she never had any notion that he would attempt to continue the search. She was grief stricken. Unknowingly she had told Finn about the one thing that would take him from Sage for the next nine centuries.

When Niklaus found out that righteous Finn knew, he staked him for his own good. He dessicated Finn to prevent him from perusing the truth further. And when he threatened to do the same to any of his other siblings the matter was dropped.

As weeks turned into months, Kol left, taking Rebekah with him as they moved west. They were gone before the hallucinations began to truly set in and Niklaus slowly went crazy.

1163 AD

Unknown location in Central Europe

"Niklaus," she whispered, reaching for him. He tried to turn away, ignoring her.

It isn't real, he told himself.

"Niklaus," she called more persistently.

No.

Her hands were soft and warm, he could smell her: lavender. "Nik."

Staring at a wall, he reached back to shrug her imaginary hands from his shoulders, "You're not real."

"Niklaus," she laughed, sinister in its sweetness. If it was an illusion, if she wasn't there, what would it hurt to look? For the thousandth time, he broke another promise to himself. Each time she came, he'd swear this time he wouldn't believe. This time he wouldn't engage her. It only made it more painful and the illusions more real in the future. She would arrive at a later date, like an old friend, lover, remembering everything he had said to her before.

"Niklaus, do you want me to go?" He reached out, touching dark strands of hair, curling them around his finger.

"No." He never wanted Tatia to go. That was the problem. The hallucinations were mild at first. He would think he had seen her in a crowd. Niklaus would imagine she spoke to him in a dream. But as he engaged her ghost, his own fantasies, the illusions grew more powerful, making him more violent than ever. He'd strike out against Elijah, if he sought to intervene, like a hundred and thirty years hadn't passed. As if they were still humans and she were still real, toying with them.

Finally he'd driven Elijah away, leaving him in Venice, with Finn's coffin. His brother looked at him like as if it would be the last time he'd ever see him. And it very well might have been.

He would go days between feedings, till his skin grew grey as ash. He'd deny himself sleep, company, sunlight, anything, sitting for hours, days, weeks in this room, talking with her, trying to hold Tatia as if she were still real: fighting a war with himself and his fantasy.

The room was littered with clothes and the dead rodents he had fed on when he could take the hunger no longer but still unwilling to leave. The scent of death, mold and sweat consumed the small area. The walls full of cracks front his obsessive pounding. The furniture laid in pieces, chunks of wood splintered everywhere- make shift stakes, all without purpose, for they couldn't kill him.

"Do you love me, Niklaus?"

He reached out, touching her face, "Yes, of course I do."

"Then why did you leave me?" she accused, stepping back, out of his grasp.

"I'm cold…" she turned looking around the room, staring out the frost covered window."I'm cold, Nik. How could you leave me alone like that?"

"I didn't mean to," he answered ardently. "I'm here now."

"Are you?"

"Yes, of course."

She glanced at the cockroach, crawling across her toe in disgust, making him feel even more pathetic, inept, "Come with me, Nik. Come with me and we can be together forever, just like you wanted."

"I can't," he whispered angrily. "Why can you not stay here with me?"

"I don't belong here, Niklaus and neither do you."

She leaned in, kissing him softly, drawing him into her, making him believe that it was much more real. An illusion couldn't be that powerful.

"We'll be together forever," she whispered against his lips, but as she pulled away it wasn't Tatia's face that looked back at him, it was Hannah.

"You'll do it? You love me right?" she questioned innocently.

"No," he rubbed his hand over his eyes. "No, not you." She was always there, Hannah's voice, her naivety, her sincerity, more consistent than even his shadow. She'd stalk him about the room, filling every crevice of his mind.

Reaching for him, her hands were like ice, cold for even the dead, "Nik, you love me."

"No, I don't. I have never loved you," he spat.

"Nik, you'll love me forever."

"Bring back Tatia, I want her back!" he yelled, storming around the room. But when she came, it seemed she never left. For hours Hannah would sit with him in silence, her presence stifling. He would close his eyes and try to focus his thoughts.

"This isn't real."

"Nik…?" he looked up; ready to scream at her again, when he found her there with Hendrik's lifeless body strewn across her lap. She ran her fingers through his matted hair, whispering to him before she looked up again.

"He's waiting for you."

1164 AD

Somewhere in Italy

"Niklaus."

With her back turned to him, the old witch knew it was him before he could even open his mouth.

"Constance."

The last time she had seen him it was thirty years ago. She was young, attractive and impressionable, willing to make deals before she knew there price. How times have changed. Although he hadn't aged a day, his appearance had suffered. His skin usually porcelain and clear was an ashy color, his person disheveled, and hair inordinately long, shaggy.

Although he'd bathed, he looked as if he should again.

"It's been a long time."

He attempted a smile before answering, "Too long, Constance."

They could have wasted time on mindless pleasantries but neither were the type.

"What is wrong, Niklaus?" strange for a witch to be so friendly with a vampire and in their brief encounter thirty years before, she knew she was defiling nature by perverting herself with him. But an old woman's wisdom had nothing on a young girl's desperation.

He twitched slightly, as if he was unaware of it, looking past her, off into the distance, watching something intently.

"Why would you say something is wrong, Constance?"

If it hadn't been his appearance that had tipped her off, or his behavior, it would've his aura. Something dark had settled over him, even more so than usual. Whatever it was, it was heavy, increasing the pressure in the small hut, causing her ears to plug- begging to be popped.

"Apart from the look of you?" that caught his attention, as he stopped staring at whatever it was that had previously absorbed his attention. "I can feel it on you."

"Feel what?"

She set down the dried plants in her hand and took a step forward but immediately stopped as if she had hit an invisible wall. "You've been spelled."

"I figured," he commented dryly.

Attempting to step forward again, a strong force pushed her back. Looking up at him, her eyes had gone wide, telling the severity of the situation. "Strongly…."

"What do you mean?"

Reaching out her hand, she stopped where she could feel it blocking her from him. When she didn't answer, but instead circled, inspecting him like an animal caught in a cage, he snapped, "Can you fix it, Constance? For old times' sake?"

"What have you done, Niklaus?" she questioned, reaching out again, before being forced to draw her hand back.

Weakly, he attempted a little satire, "A few things, over the past century, which one would you be looking for?"

But she wasn't amused with his humor, too consumed with the ugliness that had settled over him.

"You're cursed and whoever did it, the potency of it… I've never seen anything like it," she murmured, still examining him. Finally looking up, she made eye contact, "Whoever cast it, they didn't do it lightly."

She paused; watching him as he again looked past her, focusing on something else, his eyes glazed over as if transfixed. Mostly talking to herself at that point, she finished, "It most likely weakened them significantly… if not killed them in the process."

Looking over her shoulder, she sought to find what had captured his attention so intently, but found nothing. "Niklaus? Niklaus?"

"Yes? Can you help me?"

"Tell me first what you did."

For the next hour he explained the five hunters, the map (not what it lead to), the witch from the village, and how he had killed them. When he was done, Constance sat for moments in silence before finally answering, "The spell that she cast, to protect the hunters, I can't be sure, but I've heard of such things before."

"And…"

"When a protection spell is cast for a pack, the spirits are that much stronger. For each member that fails to survive, the energy transfers to the other living hunters."

"The five are dead. I killed them myself."

"The kind of hold, to have settled on you, there must still be one alive."

Close to fifty years later, only bones would be left of their bodies. "No. I'm sure of it." As soon as he said it, she appeared behind Constance, staring intently back at him.

"Niklaus…" Hannah called.

"Niklaus? Niklaus?" Constance interrupted.

"Yes, sorry." They were all dead, except for one. But Hannah wasn't a hunter, she was a naïve girl. Now, fifty years later, if still alive, she would be an old woman.

"Niklaus, a spell can only continue to work, to thrive as long as its vessel is still alive. For each life that was killed, each hunter, the curse that you've brought upon yourself is that much stronger."

"How do I fix it?"

"There must still be one hunter alive. If not, the spell would have died with them."

All he could think of was her markings, La via, La verta, La luce.

"And if there were, if this last hunter existed?"

"Find them, the spell that was cast, well, the curse will forever haunt you while they still live."

"And once they die?"

"I don't know. It could die with them or it could be passed."

"Passed?"

"To a child possibly, I couldn't say. I would have to have the last hunter to know better."

Niklaus would spend the next two years searching for the woman that had escaped him in Venice fifty two years ago.

1166 AD

Austria

Leaves crunched underfoot as he approached the hut, smoke streaming from the stucco chimney.

Hannah's illusion ran out in front of him, questioning over her shoulder, "Did you miss me?"

He blinked, ignoring her with each step he took, even as she tugged at his clothing, whispering in his ear, "I'm never far."

"Go away!" He hissed.

Years he'd searched for her, scouring her childhood village and every settlement within three hundred miles. Nowhere was she to be found. He didn't even know her surname. He'd never bothered to ask.

Foolish.

The only name he knew was Lockwood, Lockwood, Isa Lockwood. The wolf whose neck he'd snapped years past.

Two years to get to a place, to hunt her down. How carefully she thought she'd hidden herself. But he promised her, that they would meet again.

He could have knocked, attempted to be civilized about this, but what was the point? Death was death, whether pleasant words were said before or not.

With full force he pushed against the door, snapping it from its binding, leaving it to crash to the ground. Unable to step inside, he lingered in the doorway, peering in.

52 years, 4 months and 9 days, since he had seen her in person and not one day had he gone without her ghost haunting him.

At sixty, her dark hair was streaked with grey. Wrinkles had formed around her eyes and mouth: laugh lines, deep laugh lines. Fifty two years of hell he'd suffered and fifty two years of love she'd found.

He might have expected screaming, a look of shock, surprise or ever tears, but he found none. In front of the fire she sat with a boy, he couldn't have been more than ten.

"Hannah."

Only the child looked shocked. Without answering him, she pulled the boy closer, whispering in his ear, "Everything is fine, Tesoro. When I leave, go home."

The little boy looked up at her wide eyed, scared and unsure.

She only nodded in response, before rising from her seat.

"Niklaus."

"Will you not invite me in?" He snickered.

"He's not mine."

He looked over at the boy, "How can I be sure?"

Surprisingly, she smiled in responded, "You'll never find mine, Niklaus."

"I found you."

"I have not been hiding."

Motioning to the little boy, he grabbed at her skirts. Niklaus was ready to make another snarky comment, when Tatia appeared behind Hannah and the boy, resting her hands on the child's shoulders, "He's not what we've come for, Niklaus."

Leaning down, Hannah whispered goodbye to the boy, before she stepped forward, leaving the security of the small cabin.

Expecting her to run as soon her feet crossed the threshold he was disappointed when she squared her shoulders, facing him.

"Are you not happy to see me?" He taunted.

"Se dovessi camminare in una valle dell'ombra della morte, io non temerei alcun male, perché tu sei con me," she answered as a last prayer. (Even though, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me).

Tatia followed her from her home, exchanging a glance with Hannah's ghost, both women smiling at one another. It distracted Niklaus briefly, before he answered, "There is no god, Pet, only me."

"You are not God, Niklaus."

"Am I not?" He responded, raising his arms in challenge. "I will live forever. I'm indestructible. I'll know more than you could ever dream." The words may have been confident but his voice was not, as his eyes lingered on the imaginary women hovering behind the very real Hannah: watching him, unamused by him, knowing just how weak he was.

"You are only an imitation, un'anima persa." (a lost soul).

"Quiet!" he demanded, still distracted by the hallucinations.

"There will come a time… when you will want to die," Hannah promised.

"Niklaus," they called to him.

"And you'll pray to the God that you deny and receive only silence."

"Enough!" He was growing weary of her threats, twitchy with his own painful illusions.

"Run," he demanded.

Over fifty years, Hannah had waited for this moment. She'd had nightmares, heard his voice in her sleep thousands of times. But just as many times she'd also heard laughter, felt love and given love. She had, had the daughter, she'd seen all those years ago. She'd marked her as she promised Nina she would. She told her little girl stories of the hunters, the wolves and the vampires.

Hannah had sent her away when she was old enough to marry and have her own children. She'd made her promise to mark her own girls.

Hannah had, had a full life with no regrets. She was ready to die.

"No," she answered firmly and although the words had come from her mouth, all Niklaus saw was a face from close to two centuries back. He didn't remember her name, only her face. The same face that had told him "No", when he'd come for Tatia, the same eyes that responded, "No," when he tried to compel her in his childhood home.

It was strange; almost two hundred years ago he'd killed her, draining her dry, leaving his mother and Elijah to dispose of the body and never once had he thought of her since.

"Fine, have it your way."

Constance had specifically told him, he must bring her back alive. But racked with torment, annoyed by her insults and plagued by the hallucinations of her former self, Tatia and the nameless woman, he quickly stepped forward to snap her neck. And as his hands closed over her throat and her eyes willingly closed the only thing he heard was Hannah's voice, whispering in his ear, lingering in his mind, cursing him forever, "This is only the beginning…"

1166 AD

Italy

"And what will you have me do with this?" Constance questioned when he laid the decaying flesh on her table.

"I specifically told you that I needed her alive, Niklaus."

Weeks he'd lived without hallucinations. Fourteen days had passed since he had last seen Hannah's ghost and never again would he see Tatia.

"The situation didn't permit."

Looking down at the old woman, who couldn't have been more than a few years older than herself; she bid him to come closer. When he complied and she didn't feel herself being repelled as she had been years previous, she answered, "It worked. Are you still seeing them?"

"No."

Constance's forehead wrinkled as she examined Hannah's dead body, "The hallucinations may be gone but the spell isn't."

It was strange, but the moment he carried the woman into the room, she felt an unusual shift in the energy. Nothing like anything she'd experienced before. Three years past when he'd come to her, she felt a repelling force, keeping Niklaus at a distance from everything around him. Now, she felt the opposite, like the room had shrunk.

"Did you love this woman?"

"No," he scoffed.

"Did she love you?"

What kind of questions were these? What relevance did they have?

"Yes, at one point, perhaps. Why?"

"If a spell is cast and the body dies, usually the spell will die with the vessel. Although your hallucinations may have ended, the spell… you are still connected to this woman."

He didn't need Constance to tell him that. Although he'd not seen Hannah since he'd snapped her neck, the hallucination disappearing; something else had taken its place. It was vague, but noticeable. As if he'd misplaced something.

"Although, perhaps not under the same spell."

"What does this mean?" That's all he needed to hear. Would he never be rid of this woman?

"If you had brought her to me alive I could have told you more, Niklaus. There is not much I can do with a dead body."

When he left, without answers, the nagging feeling that had begun weeks before would follow him for the rest of his life. And although Constance had not told him to do so, he was sure that if he hunted down, every single last descendent in Hannah's line, whatever it was that was plaguing him would disappear with their last breaths.

Anne

The Bulgarian States

1348 AD

As he walked through the streets of Serres, bodies spilled over carts, laying in piles in the gutters. What few people where left (the brave ones) wandered the streets, keeping dirty rags over their mouths. Afraid they'd catch it as well.

In the thousand plus years Niklaus would live, never would he see anything like it. The Spanish Influenza, Plague of London, The Third Pandemic, none of them would be anything like the Black Death. People would look at him as he passed, unafraid, not cowering as he ducked in infested alleyways, digging through rotting bodies.

It had taken him a hundred and seventy eight years but he had prevailed. Hannah was wrong that day when she told him, he'd never find them. Her children, no, they lived full lives, unscathed by his presence. But their children's, children, had not been as fortunate. He'd tracked her descendents from Venice to Hungry, Bosnia and now the Bulgarian States. Following his last clue, he'd hunted down what little was left of her fledgling line to Serres.

He found a man peddling a death cart, cloaked in black, who looked at Niklaus strangely when he asked for directions that would lead him further into the crowded city.

"There's nothing but death south of here."

"And north as well," he answered, "How much further is it?"

The friar looked at him, before finally answering, "Past that row, right over there. The woman you ask for," he shook his head to signal she was most likely dead.

"And children? Does she have any?"

"момче." (A boy)

Turning to leave, he was stopped by a hand on his arm. Fumbling through layers of heavy wool, he retrieved his rosary.

"Let me bless you before you go. You walk into death, my child."

Impatient but not willing to draw suspicion he nodded as the friar prayed, "Със своята свята защита.В името на Отца, Сина, Светия Дух." (With his holy protection. In the name of the father, the son, the holy ghost)

It was her, he should be praying for. Leaving the man behind, Niklaus weaved through the dilapidated homes until he came to the one, the friar had pointed out. Pots, utensils, clothing, belongings were strewn everywhere between houses, looters digging through the homes of the dead before they too would flee.

Peering inside, the small stone structure had no door, most likely used for kindling to light the bodies they burned in the streets. What he could see was a bed with someone laying inside and next to it a child.

Looking up from the dirt, he eyed, Niklaus, "She's still alive," he begged.

"Shh…" he answered from the home's threshold, "I have not come to take her," just kill her, he thought.

"Niklaus," the body whispered, "invite him in, Niklaus."

The little boy looked to his mother, dirty cheeks stained with tears. Following her instructions, he nodded his head, giving him the permission he sought. Slowly entering, he watched as the boy, moved in closer to his mother, protective, grasping the clammy hand with black nails that reached for him.

"Niklaus," she soothed, her fingers touching they young boy's face.

"Не плачи бебе," (Don't cry baby) she murmured, "I'll be fine soon enough."

He couldn't have been more than six, maybe seven but the boy wasn't stupid. He knew she was near death. If he didn't have eyes, he could have heard it in her labored breaths. If he was deaf he could have smelled the flesh decaying, falling from the bone.

"Run along, Niklaus. Give your mother a moment."

Reluctantly, the boy looked to their guest then back to his mother.

"Go, just a few moments, promise." Leaning into her touch, he kissed her hand, before obeying, leaving the little stone home.

When she could hear him no longer, she questioned, "Have you come to take me?"

He'd intended to quickly snap her neck then follow the boy. But as he leaned over the bed, infested with flees, ticks, covered in ratted blankets he looked down and saw the face of a ghost one hundred and seventy eight years past.

"Hannah?" He questioned, before he could stop himself from saying that cursed name.

It was the same black hair. Only this time it was straight, matted back in a fevered sweat. The same blue eyes peered up at him, framed in dark circles. Her skin had lost all color, now completely ashen, her lips already turning a faint color of blue. Death would come for her soon.

"No... Anne," she replied, a weak smile wrinkling at her lips.

He'd seen every child that had been born from Hannah's line. Every girl, save those first two generations and although there was some small semblance of a similarity, never had he seen anything like this. It was the same face, the same voice, giving a creature that feared nothing, chills.

"Have you come to take me?" She asked again.

Take her? At that moment, he wished to leave immediately and never look back. Had his hallucinations resurfaced all these years later? The faint feeling he'd had the day that old woman, Hannah, had died, putting the ghost of her youth to rest, that small nagging feeling that something was wrong, missing, gone, perhaps forgotten, something important… it was back. Over the years, with each child he'd killed, with each girl he'd seen take her last breath, he'd felt some miniscule sense of relief, almost causing the feeling to dissipate all together.

But now, it was back. More present than it had been in years, stronger than he'd ever felt it.

"Niklaus," the ghosts of his hallucinations whispered in his ears.

"No," tumbled out of his mouth, more in response to his own memories than her question. Rotted, sweaty hands reached up to him, "красив," (beautiful) she commented unashamedly.

He didn't shy from her reach, but he didn't accept it either. Part of him worried engaging the apparition, possibly drawing himself back into another hell.

In fever, hovering at the precipice of death, he looked heavily, as if from the stories her mother used to tell her or possibly one of the saints to which she'd prayed to, so many times in vain.

"Вие сте ангел?" (Are you an angel). Her fingers brushed the back of his hand. "Ангел на милосърдието," (angel of mercy) she continued.

Coughing filled up the silence as she finished, "Молих се, че ще дойдеш." (I prayed you would come)

Fingers latched on to his knuckles, drawing him to sit down beside her.

"I knew, if I continued to pray, someday you would come."

The humans and their obsessions with gods, in the past four hundred years, the new god, the messiah, they called him. Catholicism had swept across Europe, bringing with it a whole new wave of ignorance, suspicion and foolish superstitions.

"I'm not an angel, Anne."

"Of course you are. The father sent you to me."

He was ready to snatch his hand back and show her what her prayers had brought her. When she rasped, "Keep him safe," followed by a heavy coughing spell, blood spewing from her lips, droplets lading in the blankets around her.

A fool, she'd be better to give her son instead, to the devil they cursed. His hand reached down to wrap around her neck, when unexpectedly she moved into his touch instead of squirming away in fear.

"Promise me, angel," she demanded.

"Should you not ask to live instead?"

Again, she gave him that same strange smile, "No…." And like as if she knew, as if she had been aware all along of whom he was, an angel, but one of death, she closed her eyes, whispering, "I'm ready," so softly that if he were still human he wouldn't have heard it, the warmth draining from her face and neck.

Niklaus never killed Anne as he had intended, the Black Death beat him to it. And although he'd got what he came for, somehow it wasn't as satisfying as all the others had been. Mayhaps it was because it wasn't him controlling her last breaths, squeezing life from her body.

Or perhaps it was something else. But instead of victory all he felt was that nagging feeling, hovering over him, taking up every inch of space in the room.

It seemed wrong, like something had been stolen from him. She would never say his name. She never knew who he really was. Taking from him the thing he'd cherished most: power. To Anne, he'd always be benevolent, as she died in peace.

Of all his victims, even Hannah, he had never lingered after they were gone to give them more than a moment's thought. But with Anne, he stayed, minutes, an hour, after her passing, until her entire body had gone cold.

And when he rose to leave, he did something else he'd never done before. Seeing a piece of crude parchment, a terribly scrawled letter, addressed to Anne, he picked it up, taking it with him.

What that letter said was insignificant. Anne had never read it alive, being unable to read, but had kept it just the same, just as Niklaus would keep it without reason or logic for the next nine hundred years.

Leaving the decrepit home, he never searched for Niklaus, the little boy. He never killed him as he had all the others. The boy would eventually succumb to the plague just as his mother had.

But in Niklaus' mind, by not killing the boy himself, he'd kept maybe the only promise he'd never given.