I do not own TVD or TO.
2011
Shoving up the sleeves of her oversized sweater proved pointless since they slipped down her arms moments later, but she persisted until her search took on a frenzy that made her fashion worries obsolete. With her pulse slamming in her ears she flipped through the overflow of pages for the fourth time. Each yellowed page held a different image of a dark object imprisoned in the tightly woven fibers.
She forced her limbs to slow down and carefully placed the objects in a pile that she would place in a folder later. There was the devil's star that would cause a thousand cuts, cursed shackles to halt a witch's power – she had loaned them out once when the Voodoo Queens had gotten out of control. There was a diamond, a dagger, a hand of glory and a blood rider. Nearly a hundred objects – most of them dark – were stacked, but there was a single, glaringly obvious, absence.
Her hands shook as she pulled every last page from the grimoire and categorized them: spells, rituals, tools and light objects. She couldn't read the final pages as they were sorted and the absence confirmed.
She took a deep breath, wiped her sweaty palms on her leggings and reached for her cell phone. She flipped to her stored numbers and pressed call. The dial tone stretched out and calmed her heart.
It was a coincidence.
It had to be a coincidence.
It was just in New Orleans.
It had to be in New Orleans.
"-Lo?" His gruff, sleep laced, voice, crackled over the line.
"Hi, sweetie," her stomach clenched, painfully, "did I wake you?"
"No," he cleared his throat.
"Who's it?" A second voice mumbled, muffled by what sounded like a pillow.
"It's my mom," he spoke away from the speaker.
"I did wake you," she chewed her bottom lip. "I'm so sorry, baby. How's Katie?"
"Good," he slowly came awake, "she's half-asleep. What's going on, mom?"
She stared at the piles of magic and pushed her hair back. "It's probably nothing…"
"You're calling at 2am," Thierry tried and failed to stifle a yawn, "it's clearly something. What's wrong?"
"I think one of my objects has gone missing," she sighed. "Could you check and make sure I didn't leave it behind?"
"What am I looking for?"
"A bronze bracelet."
She held her breath, listening to the rustle of fabric and the squeak of bed springs. A series of footsteps, opened doors and the spin of a combination lock passed before he started shifting objects around. She was certain she had locked the more dangerous items in paper, but she had been wrong before.
"I don't see a bracelet," he murmured. "Are you sure it's in your collection? It might have been taken in one of the Saint Anne raids."
"I'm sure the human faction has it," she rubbed the back of her neck. "I'm sorry for waking you." There was a pause before he spoke again; it was a habit he had picked up from her: wait and listen.
"Is everything okay, mom?"
"Its fine, honey. It's gonna be fine. I will sort this out, and then try to find something to help that little girl and then I'll be home," her smile looked strained in the mirror. "How's New Orleans?"
"Are you asking about the city, or the witches?" He chuckled. "The city is as colourful as always, and the witches are whispering about something to do with regaining their power, so its business as usual."
"What are they whispering about?" She frowned.
"Something about enlisting an Original."
"Me?" She guessed, though she was already on the side of magic.
"Not sure, but I'll keep my ear to the ground and let you know if I hear a name."
"Okay," she nodded. "I love you." She hoped the desperation in her eyes wasn't clear in her voice.
"I love you, too."
She hung up and stood, wanting to go slow – to take her time and think things through – but her muscles possessed a mind of their own and urged her to race through the dark house and into the study where she stole five of her dad's old medical files after dumping the contents in the cabinet.
In the kitchen she gathered herbs and spices from the cupboard, candles from the drawer and a metal bowl.
Back in her room she placed the piled pages in separate folders, save for one, and spaced the candles around the room; they lit with a thought and she knelt.
Measured quantities of the herbs were poured into the bowl with precise flicks of her wrist.
This was something she could do. It was something she was good at.
She tipped one of the candles over until the dried herbs caught and bit into her wrist, allowing a few drops to fall into the flames. With her eyes closed she murmured the words that would lift the remaining fog in her head and leaned down to inhale the rising smoke.
"Dekouvri sa kit e pedi," fragrant smoke tickled her sinuses. It washed over her in a tingling sensation that rose from her toes. She cried out as it reached her head and a blinding pain exploded behind her eyes.
She keeled over, pitching to the left and sprawling on the floor. Her wide eyes were blind to the hands that lifted her up onto the bed. Snippets of conversation floated around her, but her darting eyes were focused on something they couldn't see or hear.
"Should we call Bonnie?" Jeremy's eyes snapped up from his sister's unseeing gaze.
"It looks like she did this to herself," Alaric scrutinized the remnants of the spell.
Elena sat up suddenly with a gasp and a colourful curse that would have made a sailor blush. The candle flames flared up six inches and would have caught on her bedding if Alaric hadn't doused that candle with the water glass beside her bed.
Jeremy grabbed her shoulders and knelt on the side of the bed to meet her eyes. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"
"No, I'm not okay," she snapped, and immediately apologized for it; it was hardly her brother's fault. She took a deep breath and forced out the words in as calm a voice as she could manage. "I know what Esther wants."
The instantaneous end of her children had only been the beginning. The first act in a meticulous plan to undo the evil she had unleashed on the earth with her actions.
"I must admit, Kol, I am surprised at you," Klaus frowned over his glass. "Had any other vampire picked such a fight with you a century ago you would have beaten them bloody and torn out their heart."
"I did cause a good deal of internal bleeding," he turned the page in his book; it was one of the many works of literature he had missed out on.
"Destroying my landscape and breaking his neck is not the same as killing him," Klaus' eyes narrowed. "He's an insufferable fool, so why leave him alive?"
"You know the rules, Nik," he rolled his eyes, "I wasn't about to disappoint her."
"Why did he pick a fight with you anyway?" Klaus leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the arms.
"He disliked the fact that Elena's perfume was all over me," he smirked.
"I told you to stay away from my doppelganger," he growled, getting to his feet, "she is not a replacement for you to toy with."
"I am well aware of who she is," he didn't look up from his book, "and she doesn't belong to you."
"I think you'll find she does," Klaus snatched the book from his grasp.
He blinked at his empty hands for a moment, working his jaw, and sighed. "I think you'll find it has been illegal to own people in this country since 1864."
"Stay away from her, Kol!"
He tilted his head and squinted, pretending to think about it. "No," he hummed. "She's good fun, and getting under your skin is a bonus."
"Don't be possessive, Nik," Rebekah dropped onto the couch next to Kol, propping her feet in his lap, "they just danced."
Jeremy ducked, narrowly avoiding the balled up sheet of paper. It joined a piled of large crumpled balls in the hall.
He knelt on the floor across from Elena and held out a bag of blood. After a few days he had grown used to her shift in features and feeding habits, but he flinched when she tore into the bag with a savage bite.
She drained the bad, took a deep breath and allowed her right hand to fly across a blank page, leaving behind a series of bold runic symbols.
Jeremy leaned against the foot of her bed, watching as she repeated the same spell she had been using since the middle of the night.
"Elena?" He propped his elbow on his knee when the blood steeling in the same pattern. "Are you gonna tell me what the problem is? You said Kol wasn't affected by the spell and neither was Rebekah. If it's just Klaus, Elijah and the suicidal one that are going to die then I don't see the problem."
She opened her mouth to explain, but the words stuck on her tongue. Esther had thought everything through, everything, and this was the information she couldn't share because it was the knowledge that would turn the tide of support firmly to the Original family.
"I can't say," her hands fisted her hair, pulling. She wanted to scream it at the top of her lungs, break the link and then slap Kol for coming up with that stupid bracelet in the first place; after that she would slap herself for losing it, but she could have sworn it was in her grimoire yesterday.
"I literally can't say and it's driving me crazy," her head banged against the dresser.
"What can't you say?" Bonnie picked her way down the hall, stepping between balls of paper.
"And is it a 'can't' or 'won't' situation?" Caroline slipped into the bedroom.
"Definitely a 'can't' situation," she groaned, closing her eyes.
"Maybe you can get it out of her," Jeremy got to his feet, making space for the girls on the floor.
Bonnie dropped to sit cross-legged and Caroline held out a latte before joining them. Bonnie frowned at the upside down symbols that meant nothing to her.
"What's on your mind?"
"Esther," Elena sighed.
"Ah yes," Caroline gave a solemn nod, "and what did the Original Witch want? I was gonna ask last night, but I got a little distracted."
"It's hard not to be when Stefan has to carry his 'dead' brother home," Elena rolled her eyes. Maybe it would have been better to not ask Kol to spare him. She had no idea how the ritual would meet its end, but odds were it would be far more painful than anything Kol would have done. "The Original Witch Bitch wants to murder all of her children, and she used my blood to make it possible."
Caroline's brows drew together as she tilted her head. "Are you telling me you willingly gave your blood for a spell that's gonna kill the guy you like?"
"No," she cried, kicking over a bowl of herbs. "I would never help her undo the 'evil' she unleashed on the world. I've gotta find a way to undo it."
"There's no time to change anything," Bonnie folded the sheet of blood soaked paper, "they'll be dead by the end of the night."
"What?" Elena sat up.
"Esther came to ask Abby and I to join her," she frowned at the scattered herbs. "She's gonna channel the celestial energy of the full moon."
"Don't go," Elena wrapped her fingers around Bonnie's wrist.
"Even if I didn't want to it wouldn't matter," she pulled her hand free, "she's channeling out entire ancestral bloodline for power."
From downstairs she heard a knock, followed by Jeremy's voice from the kitchen informing her that he was up to his elbows in soapy water. She stood up slowly, shaking her head.
"You don't know what you're doing Bonnie," her voice shook. "You have no idea."
She shoved her phone in her back pocket and left the room, taking the stairs two at a time and opening the door.
Her brows shot up.
"Elena," he greeted.
"Elijah," she bit her lip and turned a frown to a soft smile.
"I don't mean to intrude. I was hoping you might accompany me."
She looked back over her shoulder to where her brother was clattering in the kitchen and her friends were moving around upstairs.
"I would like to show you something," he added hopefully.
"Sure," she nodded. Her bracelet caught the light when she motioned to the closet. "Just let me grab my coat."
Caroline swept up the mess on the floor after the front door closed.
"I don't get it," she blinked, "if she didn't give her blood then how did she get it."
"She might have come to see me yesterday," Bonnie stared at the floor. "She asked me to bring her something from Elena's spell book that would help her in her quest."
"Bonnie!"
"It was to kill Klaus," she held out her hands. "I didn't know she wanted to kill them all."
"What did you give her?" She crossed her arms.
"Some kind of bracelet," Bonnie shrugged. She picked up a blank sheet of paper and made a quick sketch. "It looked like this."
Caroline frowned at the image as Bonnie pulled out her cell phone, and read the text.
"That's Abby; I gotta go."
Okay... So this was never part of my plan, but when I was working on the next chapter tonight I came up with a way for Kol to become human again, temporarily, before becoming like Elena with an altered version of his mother's spell.
Now I'm just debating if I should do it. It would change the plot a bit, but not much.