"I remember the day, between the past and the pain.
We were never afraid of places unknown.
There was nothing to fear, there was faith in the air.
We will never be scared of letting go.
What happened to the world I used to know?"

"This can't be happening. This can't . . . this can't."

Saturday had finally arrived, after a couple more days of actually being sick and pretty weak. That was what I got for playing hooky. I ended up really getting sick, sick enough that I spent most of my days laying around in bed, doing a whole lot of nothing.

Stomach bugs were notorious for leaving me for dead, but something about this felt different. These kinds of illnesses didn't allow for any kind of food to be kept within my body, not until the worst had cleared my system and recovery was imminent.

I was able to eat. I was able to keep most stuff down, but things were exceptionally worse when I first woke up.

Until I woke up this morning throwing up again, after feeling like myself again last night, the thought hadn't even occurred to me.

It was ringing in my mind now, that one singular thought that, despite being completely impossible, seemed to be screaming at me.

You're only sick in the mornings. After lunch, the sickness is gone.

The very thought had me so messed up inside that it made me sick again, or that might've been the supposed morning sickness. I found myself in the bathroom again, sitting in the floor, leaned against the wall near the toilet while my mind tried to come up with any scenario except the one that seemingly had presented itself to me.

There was no way I was pregnant. My period . . . actually hadn't come yet. It hadn't occurred to me, in the middle of everything going on and all the excitement that Kol had brought to my life, but my period was a week late. For me, that wasn't normal.

My breaths began shaking out of me, some parts of my body trembling along with it. There was one way to get this feeling off my back for sure, to put these terrifying thoughts to rest.

Hidden just underneath our bathroom cabinet, tucked back behind the usual feminine products that neither Jeremy or our dad would've ever dared to look past, was an unopened box of pregnancy tests.

Elena bought them years ago. She had gotten them a couple weeks after she and Matt had sex for the first time, when she was a day late. The panic had been there the very next day, even though they used a condom and did everything safely. Her paranoia about ruining her life set in, and she bought a pregnancy test at the first non-existent sign of being pregnant.

She never got to take them, though. The day she planned to, she got her period, and that was that. The test was in the back of our bathroom cabinet ever since.

Hopefully it wasn't expired. Getting another one in secret would've been nearly impossible.

Just as I pushed myself off the wall, to begin digging through our cabinet for the tests, Elena came walking into the room, concern twisting across her expression. She looked at me as if I was lying on the floor dead.

"I thought you were better," she said. "You seemed fine last night."

"I thought so, too."

Her eyebrows knit together. "I think you should stay home tonight. Maybe call Kol and have him come watch you while we're all at the ball? I would stay here, but we need to talk to Esther."

I shook my head. "No, go on. I should be fine by tonight, if pattern holds up. I think I need to go. She wanted us both there."

"I'll go get you something to drink," she said, and that was an offer I couldn't refuse. The contents of my stomach were gurgling again, and I absolutely was over this already.

Somehow, I managed to keep everything down and dug the box out, finding the expiration date across the box to be February of the following year. There were three tests inside, and just for good measure, I decided it would be best to talk all three of them. Three were far more accurate than one ever could be.

I waited and attempted to listen for any sign of life downstairs, and the deep voices that didn't belong to anyone in my immediate family gave me assurance that I would have time to at least pee on the sticks before Elena made it back up with something for me to drink.

There was no way to go about this besides just sitting down and doing it. My heart was hammering against my chest, bringing beads of cold sweat to ever crevice of skin sweat could slip into. I had learned how to breathe even when my mind forgot how, but the air stung inside of my lungs, pulling goosebumps onto the skin of my arms like an army of reminders of the sheer impossibility that might've been happening to me.

The easiest way to use all three tests, without having to wait until I had to go to the bathroom again, was to pee into a cup and then dip the tests into them. The only cup in here was the one we used to get water to rinse our mouths out after brushing our teeth, but I would make sure to get a new one after it was all said and done with.

Filling the cup half full, I cleaned myself up and unwrapped each little purple and white stick. Since there wasn't a lot of time, I couldn't just sit around and think about how horrifying this situation was. All I could do was rip the caps off the end of each stick and dip the tests inside of the cup, soaking them thoroughly enough to get an accurate response.

I put the caps back on each stick, not allowing myself to see the results. They were supposed to lay flat while they worked on getting the results, so I laid them across the counter, back side facing up, and draped a towel over them, in a way that was unsuspicious enough.

The place I kept the vervain hidden underneath my bed seemed a good enough place to hide the box until I could dispose of it without anyone realizing what I was doing, so that's where I threw it. There were footsteps moving up the stairs, so I had to clean up any traces of my mess.

Elena got to my room around the same time I stepped out of the bathroom. She had a small glass of cherry juice, along with a bottle of water, and her face was tense, with more annoyance than it had had before she went down there.

Whoever was down there—my money was on a vampire—was pissing her off about something.

All I had to do was raise an eyebrow in her direction, and she sighed. "It's Damon and Stefan. They're both downstairs convincing me that it's a bad idea to go tonight. Esther wanted to meet the doppelgängers, and they insist that you're enough. I still think you should stay home tonight."

"The way this virus has been, I'll be fine tonight," I disagreed. "As much as I like the idea of you staying home, I don't really think we can do that. Besides, I can protect myself. If a situation gets bad enough, I can at least stun someone to get myself far enough away that Damon or someone can protect me."

She didn't look convinced, but there was so much to do today with not a whole lot of time, so instead of sticking around and arguing with the stubborn twin who usually got her way, she left, back downstairs to continue convincing the Salvatores to leave her be.

It left me alone with the three little sticks, covered by the hand towel, and my hands were trembling again. I stepped into the bathroom, taking a good long sip of cherry juice, and prepared myself for whatever I was going to find.

Slowly, I removed the towel and took one final deep breath. There wasn't time for standing around anxiously, like I might've done in another situation, so instead, I had to just flip them all over.

The first one made my stomach knot up, the little blue plus symbol much more vibrant than I imagined it might be. There was no way, however. That must've been the faulty of the three.

The second one had the same results, as did the third one.

All three tests were positive.

My legs gave out from underneath me as the weight of this news really hit me. Before that, it had just been a fear, an impossibility that I was trying to wipe from my mind, but it wasn't a fear anymore.

This was real; I was pregnant.

How could that have happened? Vampires can't have kids. That was one of the abilities they lost after becoming immortal. Rebekah wanted a child more than anything, which was what she hated most about being a vampire. All I had ever slept with were vampires, and Damon had been almost a year ago.

Somehow, Kol had gotten me pregnant.

My mind was spinning, and I found myself sliding into the floor again, one hand covering my face while the other held the three tests.

How could a vampire have a baby? What would that even make the child?

It explained why Esther wanted me dead. Somehow, she knew I was pregnant before I did, and she wanted to kill me before I could bring the child into the world.

What did that make this child? If he was a vampire, I was a witch-werewolf hybrid . . . what would that make this child?

My mind began thinking over all the thing Esther had said to me, maybe something that might've pointed in the direction of how this might've happened. All I could think of was the first blunt thing she had said to me.

"Your magic is not of nature."

"I know it's not common, but it's of nature, even if it's not normally how nature does things."

"Regardless, it has put you in a dangerous position that leaves me no other choice."

How had my magic done this, though? It wasn't like I put a spell on Kol while we were making love that suddenly made him fertile.

Or maybe . . . the feeling that resembled magic coursing through my veins wasn't sexual desire. Maybe the magic from his blood was coursing through my veins, and I somehow took enough to make him fertile, maybe even temporarily mortal.

It didn't make any sense to me, how that was possible, but it was the only explanation I had. Kol didn't get anyone else pregnant over the centuries, so what other reason would there be for me suddenly falling pregnant?

The possibilities were endless. What was inside of me?

I was a werewolf and a witch. Kol was a vampire, and at one point, he was a witch as well.

Whatever this child was going to be, nature didn't approve, and if I stayed here, I was gonna die.

This baby was going to die, my baby . . . Kol's baby.

Somehow, I had to get out of here, alone. Esther put killing her kids as her priority, since I was still alive, so I would have a chance to get away, as long as they were still breathing.

As long as none of them followed me, neither would she, not until she had killed them all. Not only did I have to leave alone, I had to make sure she couldn't do anything to hurt them.

One way or another, Kol and I would both make it out of this alive, even if it meant being alone to do it.

A/N: Surprise!

Okay, so, this was the twist I was rambling about however many chapters ago that I wasn't sure if you guys would love it or hate it. When I originally had the idea for this story, Esther met Darcy and put a spell on her that made her a vessel of life, as Kol couldn't stay away from her, and that would kind of reverse his vamprism while he was around her so that Esther could kill him to kill all of her children, but then that timeline didn't work out, and I wasn't entirely sure how that would affect her with her being a siphoner and whatnot.

But, I hope this isn't too far out there for you guys. I haven't really watched The Originals, so I don't know how things went with Hope and whatnot. I'm not really trying to follow that storyline but instead make one of my own.

The lyrics are from the song The World I Used to Know by We Came as Romans.

Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)