AN: I do not own TVD or TO.
Three days; it took three days to find a flight to New Orleans. Being one of two Original-Witch Hybrids was awesome most days, but it really sucked when compulsion and magic proved incapable of aiding them. No amount of compulsion could send a plane into a typhoon; no amount of magic could dispel that typhoon from so far away.
It had been three days since Rebekah called and they were made aware of the potential problem.
It had been two days since the news had begun reporting 'spontaneous earthquakes' centralized in the city.
It had been one day since her anxiety rose to terrifying levels.
"If you bite much harder then you'll make yourself bleed," Kol murmured. He slid his hand over hers, entwining squeezing her fingers. "What's bothering you darling? Other than the child we're trying to save, I mean."
Her foot bounced against the front of the seat in front of her; the motion was barely noticeable next to the vibration of the plane.
"Darling," he lifted their joined hands, kissing her knuckles.
"I'm…" she closed her eyes. "I'm just," she lowered her head to his shoulder, "so tired."
"Then take a nap," he chuckled, kissing the top of her head.
"I can't," she groaned. Her hair tickled his nose as she shook her head. "I'm too wired and uncomfortable to sleep."
"This plane isn't exactly equipped for comfort," he traced the line of her nose with his eyes.
"It's not that," she murmured, squirming in place. She squeezed her upper arms together; when that failed to work she let go of his hand and physically shifted her breast.
"Darling," he gasped, scandalized.
She rolled her eyes and peeked up at him through her lashes.
"It's my bra," there was an ache in her chest, "it's too tight, and I can't relax."
"Oh well, if that's all," he smirked, sliding his hand behind her back, "allow me to remove the offensive garment. I shall tear it to shreds for daring to mar your skin."
"You'd tear it to shreds for fun," she snorted. "And you can't take it off here," her eyes flickered to the five humans surrounding their seats. She could smell them all, and the scent made her mouth water.
Elena straightened up in her seat and looked down; inspecting the small space they had managed to wrangle. Personally she would have preferred a private plane, but time was of the essence and she refused to waste it waiting for bureaucracy.
Six inches separated her knee from the seatback ahead, and she was close to Kol that if her hips were a little wider she would have been encroaching on his personal space – at least she would have if he believed in personal space.
Glancing around, she came to a decision and snaked her hands beneath her shirt. In seconds she had unhooked her bra and pulled it off through her sleeve and tucked the mess of lace and wire into her purse on the floor. Then she twisted, presented Kol with her back and folded her legs on the seat beside her; bracing them against the wall. With her left hand she lifted the armrest and leaned back.
"What are you doing?" He whispered when she was settled, raising an arm to brace her back.
"Getting comfortable," she snuggled into his chest. She squeezed her upper arms again.
"Does it still hurt?" His brows drew together.
"A little," she admitted, "I'll be fine in a few minutes. I don't get it, though," she looked up at him, "that bra was always so comfortable."
He dragged his hand up her stomach until his fingers brushed the swell of her breast and he gently kneaded; almost laughing when she released a contented sig
The captain chose that moment to tell them they would begin their descent and be in the city within the hour.
"Kol," she breathed.
"Yes, my love?" He slid his hand back down her belly.
"I know we should check with Rebekah first, but…" she chewed her bottom lip.
"You haven't heard Thierry's voice in three days," he nodded. "We'll stop their first."
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Don't thank me, love," he chuckled, "I just want to avoid my family."
"You're also curious," she reached up, patting his cheek.
The apartment building was old, a factory converted into lofts, and on any given day it exuded charm, but in that moment something didn't feel quite right.
Her feelings of anxiety grew until she was certain she was going to snap the chain around her neck.
The apartment was empty. The only signs of inhabitation were the remnants of a breakfast that had been sitting for a few days next to a bunch of brown bananas.
"He's not much for cleaning is he?" Kol peered into the cup at the congealed cream, but refrained from inhaling through his nose.
"He'd never leave a mess," Elene shook her head. She had raised him better than that. "Something's not right."
"Have you tried calling?"
"He hasn't answered," she nodded. "I never wanted to be the kind of person who has texting relationship with someone she loves, but I feel like that's who I am."
"That's not who you are," he crossed the loft, taking hold of her shoulders.
"It's how he sees me," she pouted.
"I refuse to believe that," he shook his head. "Up until a few days ago the two of you would talk on the phone for a minimum of an hour a night. If he's not calling you then he is probably busy."
She lowered her chin and glanced at her phone. The messages over the last few days had been along the same lines: everything is fine, I love you, and New Orleans is not falling apart.
Her eyes locked on one of the messages about the city and the time stamp beside it. She couldn't be sure without checking her call logs but it looked like the same time that Rebekah had called and told her about the first earthquake.
Her chest tightened.
"Something's wrong," she flipped the phone around and pointed to the message.
"Why would he lie to you?" Kol looked up from the screen.
"He wouldn't."
Elena took his hand and hurried out onto the street. She had every intention of racing towards the old Mikaelson compound, but she froze in her tracks.
Her eyes locked on a tall man with dark skin and tight brown curls. It took her three seconds to place where she had seen him before, but when the recognition crossed her face something akin to fear flittered over his features.
He bolted, but she was faster. In seconds she had left Kol behind and pinned him to the brick alley by his throat.
"Evening Diego," her expression hardened. "Care to tell me why you ran from little old me?"
"How do you know I wasn't running from him?" He jerked his chin.
"Do you even know who he is?" Elena tilted her head to where Kol was sauntering into the alley.
"Doesn't everyone," he smirked.
"You are so cocky," she rolled her eyes.
"You love that about me."
Elena focused her full attention on Diego. Within seconds she felt his skin heat under her hands as his blood boiled; he gasped, choking on air.
"How are you doing that?"
"Magic," she glared. "Where is my son?"
"I don't…"
"Don't lie to me," she snapped, upping the heat, "I really hate being lied to."
After nearly a century of living in the compound she knew it like the back of her hand. The courtyard with its lyrical fountain was one of her favorite rooms, but she just knew she would forever associate it with what was about to happen.
And it was going to be bad since Marcel, Klaus and Elijah were all present.
She got the sense that Elijah was going for something intimidating when she walked in, but Marcel knew him pretty well and his knowledge made him confident; he stood tall and proud.
He stood tall and proud, until she appeared behind Elijah.
It was Klaus who saw her first. Being sprawled on the floor near the door gave him the perfect view of her heels coming down near his head.
Marcel saw her second. He took an involuntary step back at the sight of her mottled skin, gulping audibly.
Elijah frowned but then slowly turned around. His heart stilled when he saw her.
"Elena," he breathed.
The familiar Petrova fire flared in her eyes and for one moment he knew true terror for the woman he had seen perform daring feats of magical engineering, but then he followed her eyes.
"I'll get to you," she snapped.
The rage was not directed at him.
"Elena," Marcel took a slow step back, raising his palms towards her. "I didn't have a choice. Klaus didn't leave me a choice."
"No choice," she glanced down to her feet where Klaus was getting up, "no choice," she closed her eyes.
"I didn't…"
Elena threw up her hand, tossing Marcel into the wall with the force of a hurricane wind. The stucco shattered behind his back, leaving exposed brick.
"No choice," she shrieked, tossing him to the left and taking out half of a column.
Elijah backed up towards Klaus.
"No choice?!"
The railing broke under Marcel's body. She caught a piece of flying wood the length of her forearm and moved, hitting him so hard the oak shattered into splinters.
"There's always a choice," she grunted, kicking him in the ribs.
"Should we stop her?" Elijah glanced sideways at Klaus as Elena started kicking and Marcel coughed up blood.
"Personally, I'd like to see where this goes," he shook his head. For the moment the dagger he had stabbed Elijah with was forgotten. "Did you know they knew each other?"
Elena shrieked, and they looked over to see Marcel had somehow managed to pin her to the floor. She flipped them over.
Her fist collided with his jaw, crunching through bone.
"Always…" she panted, "… always a choice…" she punched between words. "If you weren't on a freaking power trip you'd have seen that."
"B… broke…" Marcel groaned through his broken jaw, "…ru…rul…rules."
Her blows lowered to his chest.
He moved through row upon row of vampires in various stages of desiccation. The further he went the more he believed that he should have handled Marcel and let Elena do this part, but there had been no way to quail her r
High heels clicked on the stone floor, muffled by layers of dust and decay. For a moment he thought it was Elena, but the shoes were farther in the foundations of the old house.
"Hello?" He called.
There was a brief moment of silence.
"Kol?"
He flashed through the ruins around bricked up vampires until he found her near a back wall.
"Bex?"
"You're late," she crossed her arms.
"I couldn't get a flight," he smirked. "What are you doing here?"
"I got to town and found out Nik daggered and traded Elijah to Marcel as some botched peace offering, and to get him back he concocted a distraction," she glanced around. "I found out after the fact the distraction was Thierry and that Marcel sealed him up down here. It took me a couple of days to find the location."
"Let me guess," he moved along the wall, "you were hoping to have him out of here before Elena found out."
"Judging by your presence here I'm going to say I failed," she sighed.
A voice croaked from the end of the row, dusty and raw.
"She's gonna kill him."
Her mouth had stopped forming words at some point – she wasn't entirely sure when it had happened. There were too many feelings of rage to sort through, and all of those emotions stuttered out of her in hard punches and sharp grunts.
The only thing that mattered was causing as much pain as possible.
Elijah's eyes flickered from Elena to Klaus to the door's arch where three sets of feet entered the compound. His brows lowered, but his shock was nothing compared to Klaus.
"What the blood hell?" He breathed, staring at his younger siblings.
Mud clung to Rebekah's shoes and Kol was covered in a fine red dust, but Klaus' eyes were drawn to the grey man between them.
Rebekah tightened her grip around Thierry's back to fully support the dead weight. Three days underground shouldn't have desiccated him to the point he could barely function, but the rebar thrust through his abdomen had ensured he quickly bled out and starved that much faster.
Kol relinquished his hold and pushed between his gaping brothers. Personally he didn't care if Elena tore out Marcel's heart – he never had liked him – but he knew she would; one day she would regret killing one of her oldest friends in a fit of rage regardless of what he had done to deserve it.
"Darling?" He reached for her shoulder.
Elena shook him off, landing another crunching punch to Marcel's nose.
He sighed. With a strong grip on her upper arms Kol physically lifted her off of Marcel. He wrapped his arms around her and held tight as she struggled and snarled at him to let her go.
"Elena," he bent, whispering in her ear, "look."
"Let go of me," she hissed.
"Mom?"
Elena froze and Kol took that as his cue to release her. He caught a glimpse of her shimmering eyes before she blurred and appeared on the other side of the room.
She threw her arms around Thierry holding the back of his neck. His skin was like sandpaper under her palms.
Marcel rolled over slowly, groaning and searching for purchase on the blood slicked stones.
"Elena," he called.
She stiffened, but refused to turn, ignoring him and the Originals in assembly. Kol and Rebekah were the only vampires present not currently triggering her anger and she didn't trust herself to so much as look at one of the other three.
She straightened her spine, sucked in a calming breath that did absolutely nothing to calm her and steered Thierry around before changing her mind and racing from the compound.
Rebekah stomped some of the mud from her heels and looked beyond Klaus and Elijah to where Marcel was getting to his feet by Kol.
"Did you learn nothing from Papa Tunde?" She shook her head. "You never poke a Mama Bear."
"Is someone going to tell us what the bloody hell is going on here?"
"Vanchure?" Elijah frowned. He searched his memory for all he knew of Thierry.
"Yes," Rebekah saw the moment the information clicked in the way his eyes shifted. "Elena never left New Orleans; she hid in plain sight. Right under your noses."
"Rather clever actually," Kol smirked. He turned his attention towards Marcel. "You, however, were not." He tilted his head, considering, and then moved. His arm struck, sinking into Marcel's upper abdomen; he curled his fingers around the hot organ and pulled.
Marcel dropped with a groan while Kol inspected the spleen in his clenched fist.
She came to a stop in a pristine sitting room, lowering her filthy son down on the cream and gold sofa. Flakes of blood and brick dust fluttered down on the material.
Her heart ached.
"I'm so sorry, baby," her voice cracked. "I should have come home sooner."
"Y… you di… didn't know." A vein throbbed under his eye that swiveled to the door.
"Who the hell are you?"
Elena stood up slowly and turned around to face the woman.
Her dark brown hair tumbled over her shoulders. One of her hands rested on the gentle swell of her abdomen and the other held an iron fire poker.
"You're gonna need something stronger," her eyes flickered to the weapon, "to take out an Original."
"Oh, joy," she scoffed, "another Original. Because I don't have enough Mikaelsons around."
"I'm not a Mikaelson, Hayley," Elena shifted, blocking the girl from her son's line of sight. "I'm the one that put Klaus down, and if not for Elijah's intervention he would have stayed down."
"You know my name?" Hayley tilted her head. She dropped the fire poker and crossed her arms.
"Hayley Marshall," Elena cleared her throat, "the werewolf girl with exceptionally poor taste in men. Rebekah filled me in when she got to town."
"So I'm the subject of supernatural gossip?"
"You are doing something impossible," her eyes flickered down. "I don't know a thing about your personality, but I sincerely hope your baby takes after you. Does Klaus keep blood in the house?"
"Bags of it in the fridge," Hayley nodded, "it's nauseating."
"Show me," Elena's mouth strained around the smile.
"Do I have to?"
"Yes," Thierry coughed. "She doesn't trust me to be alone with you."
"I trust you, sweetie," Elena glanced back over her shoulder, "but Hayley is pregnant, and she has four times the normal amount of blood coursing through her body." She turned her attention back to the werewolf, striding in her direction. "I'm Elena, by the way, and this is my son."
She took Hayley's elbow, steering her into the hall and promising Thierry that she would return in a few minutes with blood bags.
He slumped back against the cushions and closed his eyes. After being bricked in and forced to stand upright with a length of metal in his gut the antique couch was heavenly; exhaustion beckoned him towards sleep. It was a sleep he would never want to wake up from, so he fought it, struggling to listen to his mother and the werewolf as they moved through the house. They sounded closer than they should have; he doubted they were in the kitchen, and his doubts were confirmed when heels clicked towards the knocking at what he thought was the front of the house.
Hayley's voice drifted towards him on the air.
"What are you going here?"
"What the bloody hell were you thinking?" Kol snapped the moment they reached the mansion. He spared the sprawling mansion a cursory glance; he didn't really have any memories of it, having first been awakened after the compound had been completed.
There was a single building in New Orleans associated with pleasant memories.
"I was thinking we had to get Elijah back," Klaus gestured to him.
"A need that could have avoided had you refrained from shoving a dagger through my heart and giving me to Marcel in what I can only assume was a show of good faith."
"Why would you need a 'show of good faith'?" Kol shoved up his sleeves. "And where the hell did you come from," he snapped at Elijah, eyes darting to his sister, "last I heard you were stuck in a box."
"Did you come all this way to save him?" Klaus snapped
"Oh, please... I would have been perfectly content leaving you to rot for a while after what you did," he gestured to Klaus, "but Elena needed you. Now will someone tell me what's going on here?"
Rebekah stepped forward to answer but was cut off by Klaus' guttural growl.
"The local witches bound one of their own to the girl carrying my child; they have been using their leverage to blackmail me."
Kol felt the beginning of a headache. "To what end?" He rubbed his temples.
"They want Marcel dethroned."
"And his secret weapon back," Elijah added. His red tie fluttered in the wind. "They require the young witch..." His voice cut off, a glance at Klaus revealed that he too was speechless.
Kol's fingers stretched toward the sky, palms held out in a cease and desist motion. A ball of lead had settled in his stomach. Lifting his chin he spoke slowly, deliberately forming each word.
"Are you telling me that all of this madness is over Davina bloody Claire?"
"Yup," Rebekah popped the 'p'.
Slowly his fingers curled and uncurled; blood pounded in his ears. He closed his eyes and seethed in silence for a moment before exhaling a controlled breath; blind to the way his brothers were attempting to speak without vocal cords.
"Where is the werewolf girl?" He lowered his hands, relinquishing the hold he had. Opening his eyes he saw they were gaping. "What?"
"Elena didn't tell them she was tweaking mother's spell," Rebekah walked backwards between them. She thoroughly enjoyed the way their eyes budged. She glanced over her shoulder to Kd. "Hayley's inside."
That snapped Klaus out of his shock and he moved, blocking Kol's path, but wisely maintaining a few feet of distance.
"What do you want with her?" A deep frown pulled the edges of his mouth.
"Clearly I want to rip her limb from limb," he rolled his eyes.
"I don't believe your sarcasm is appreciated," Rebekah smirked. Her eyes cut to Klaus. "He's going to unbind her from the witch, you bloody w anther."
The wind shifted and Kol caught the remnants of her perfume.
"Assuming Elena hasn't already done so."
"I don't hear them inside," Elijah frowned.
A loud crash came from the sitting room. The siblings exchanged a look and then raced inside, finding Thierry swaying on the spot over a broken crystal vase. He stared at the shards for a beat then lifted his eyes.
"S... someone was here."
Rough stone dug into her shoulder blades, snagging the soft Cashmere sweater. Lead held her eyelids closed, but no amount of sleepless nights amounted for her exhaustion; she had even managed to snag a short nap on the plane.
She attempted to concentrate through the fog in her mind.
She thought there was a woman. An older woman with dark curls and a bright scarf that held them back.
She knew there had been a spell.
"Elena," a voice whispered near her ear.
A spell that hit her before she could blink.
"Elena."
A spell to disorient.
"Elena."
A spell to sleep.
"Elena."
A spell to weaken.
"Elena!"
She felt a glancing blow against her thigh and squirmed away.
"Wha..." she slurred the word. Her blood was inching through her body, stalled by something.
She forced her eyes open, blinking against the flickering candlelight. She managed to focus long enough to take in the zip ties around Hayley's wrists and the iron holding her own hands together.
She recognized them.
She made them.
"What's going on?" She mumbled around her mouthful of cotton.
"Agnes," Hayley's eyes darted to an adjoining room. "She drugged you."
"With what?" Elena croaked. She could break the chains, but she needed blood first. "It's not vervain."
"You took out Klaus, right?" Hayley shuffled closer. "Can you get us out of this?"
Elena shook her head. The chains clinked as she tried to move.
"I feel like they drained me. Am I desiccated? I feel like I'm desiccating."
"You are not desiccating Miss Gilbert."
Elena tipped her head up, squinting. "Agnes?" She lifted her hands when she nodded. "You're gonna be sorry for this."
"I don't foresee you being a problem," Agnes knelt, "and your lover won't dare attack while we have you."
Elena's eyes narrowed. She could feel the exhaustion dragging her back down, and she fought it.
"What are you doing, Agnes?" Hayley glared, struggling against her bonds.
"Taking a risk, the Harvest must be completed. Klaus wasn't getting the job done, so we're turning to Kol; legend says he's psychotic and a maniac, but he gets the job done."
"And what's to stop him from killing you," she snorted, glancing out to the other room, "and everyone else?"
"Because," Agnes' nose wrinkled, "he has a soft spot for you, and I'm willing to bet he will do whatever it takes to save you and," she flattened her palm on Elena's flat stomach, "the abomination you created together."
Elena's eyes dropped to her stomach.