To nessafly: Thank you for reviewing again! There will be a lot more focus on him in upcoming chapters and the sequel will revolve around him.
To JennyMikaelson: I never said it was E.J. he was going to kidnap. *grins evilly* I can't say if Katherine will make an appearance! I haven't started classes yet, but I can imagine I won't have a lot of time to write on this once they do. Thanks for reviewing!
To kadienewberg: Thank you! So, basically, I can make you ship him with just about anybody? I'm so glad you like him! I was hoping nobody would hate him for treating Caroline the way he did. Did you mean you don't want me to kill the Originals or create a love triangle? Neither one will happen!
AN: I can't believe I'm updating today. I'm going to make this short and quick. Thank you to everybody who reviewed and to everybody for reading!
Disclaimer: Reference previous disclaimers.
"What was that about?" Elena asked Elijah after a beat of silence. She had seen Rebekah break down before, but nothing like that. The pure terror on the Original's face had been absolutely terrifying. It was distracting from the fact that her boyfriend had had a child by another girl, that was for sure.
"She was just overreacting," Elijah mumbled, turning away from them all and strolling away. "I need a drink." He almost never indulged in alcohol with the purpose of escaping reality, but he reasoned that this was a perfect excuse.
Finn watched after his brother before returning his attention to Elena. "Rebekah has always been a bit of a drama queen."
"A spell!" Bonnie suddenly exclaimed. "That's what I need!" Elena hurried after her friend as Bonnie scampered away. "I just need my grimoire!"
"I have one upstairs in my room!" E.J. called after the witch, descending the stairs. Bonnie froze and spun around, staring at her from across the room. "What, is that weird?"
"Which one is it?" Bonnie asked, ignoring the question and hurrying over to the staircase, Elena still following her. The doppelganger had decided to keep her friend in sight until Bonnie stopped acting so weird. And becoming possessed and spouting off nonsense would be wonderful, too.
"Third door on the left," E.J. replied as Bonnie and Elena hurried past her. "You can't miss it. The door's open and it looks like the room exploded." Elena paused for a beat and stared down at E.J., holding onto the stair rail. "Don't ask," E.J. snapped.
Elena nodded as she continued up the stairs after her friend.
Once they were gone, E.J. turned imploring eyes on her uncles. "Okay, as you probably know," E.J. began, "I do not speak whatever language Rebekah was speaking back there. What did she say?"
"When?" Kol asked, cracking a smirk. E.J. ignored him since she had figured out long ago that Kol cracked jokes when he was suffering from strong emotions. Terror was a fairly strong emotion, after all.
Finn reached back and whacked his youngest brother on the back of the head. "You really need to stop speaking for a day or two," he growled, turning his attention back to his niece. He didn't know if he would ever get used to thinking of E.J. as his little sister's daughter. Or thinking of Rebekah even having a daughter!
"Djöfullin Veiðimaður means 'Devil Hunter,'" Finn explained. E.J.'s eyes widened in alarm, and Finn put up a hand to calm her.
Niklaus jumped in, "It's a story our mother used to tell us." Amazingly, the hybrid did not even flinch at mentioning his mother. "Back then, it was meant to comfort," he continued. "The Devil Hunter only hunted those of the Dark, you know?"
E.J. understood his meaning immediately. "And we are of the Dark," she muttered.
"It is only a legend," Finn broke in, shooting his younger brother a scathing look. "Rebekah just thought that kid was him." Why some boy was in E.J.'s room, Finn didn't know, and it bothered him. But that boy being the Devil Hunter? That was just absurd.
E.J. frowned. "The kid didn't seem like a Devil Hunter, or whatever," she said.
Niklaus raised an eyebrow. "What did he seem like?" E.J. shrugged. "There you go." E.J. glared. "What?"
Damon had been standing by calmly while the Originals and their little pet made small talk, but at the mention of something called the "Devil Hunter," he decided that it would be best if he and his brother made themselves scarce.
"That would be our cue to leave," he suddenly declared, grabbing his brother by the arm and trying to drag him to the door.
"I'm not leaving E.J.!" Stefan snarled, yanking his arm from his brother's grasp and stomping over to stand with the Originals and E.J.
Damon turned around and glared at his brother. "We're going home, little brother," he growled. "Don't make me come get you."
Stefan glared at his brother. "I'm not leaving my daughter, Damon."
"We are not doing this right now!" the elder Salvatore snapped, throwing his arms up. "We are going to go home and talk about this like civilize—" He suddenly froze and seemed to just register his brother's statement. "Wait, what?"
Stefan ignored his brother. "I'm not going, Damon, and you can't make me."
Damon was still trying to process his brother's words. "What did you just say, Stefan?" He was giving his brother a hard look, but Stefan wasn't even looking at him.
"Are you all right?" Stefan asked E.J., whose eyes were on Damon. She had just realized what Stefan being her father meant. Damon came with the territory.
"I think Damon's confused, Daddy," E.J. piped up just to see Damon's reaction.
She was not disappointed. The elder Salvatore's left eyebrow began to twitch and his look had morphed into a hybrid of horrified and utterly shocked.
Stefan finally remembered something, something very important. "Ohhh," he said, laughing nervously. "I didn't tell you yet, did I?" Damon turned his gaze to him, his eyes slowly blinking.
Stefan sped over to his brother and took him by the arm, slowly leading him over to stand with the others. "I'm not really sure how to say this, Damon," Stefan began nervously, "but E.J. is mine and Rebekah's daughter."
At the Original's name, Damon's composure broke and he began cussing his dead heart out. He smashed a few decorative vases before he got himself back under control.
Once he was no longer in danger of strangling his brother, Damon sped back over and grabbed Stefan by his shirtfront. "Are you trying to tell me," Damon growled, "that you and Rebekah had that little brat together?" Stefan nodded robotically.
"Don't act so horrified, Damon," E.J. taunted, grinning. She was still shook up from her confrontation with the boy and unnerved by Rebekah's reaction to him, but she could not miss the chance to needle the elder vampire. At least she now knew that he was definitely older than she was. "Or Uncle Finn and Uncle Kol will have to calm you down, right, fellas?" Finn gave her a disapproving look, but Kol smirked.
Damon's head snapped to her. "Hey!" he snapped. "Why do they get 'Uncle' and I just get 'Damon'?" He wasn't sure why he cared, but he felt he should be offended. After all, he had put up with this girl for two days and had taken very good care of her! Well, apart from those times he'd threatened her, cussed at her, or manhandled her. Yeah, apart from those, he had been the perfect guardian!
Okay, he had been a total dick. And now he was being told that this girl was his brother's daughter. His niece. He was torn between slapping Stefan and dragging both his little brother and his newfound niece back home.
E.J. quirked up an eyebrow. "Why do you care?" she mocked. "Maybe because they aren't total dicks?"
Kol looked hurt. "I'm not a 'dick'?"
E.J. turned to him and shook her head. "Nah, you're a bastard."
Kol looked mollified. "Will have to do, I guess."
Elijah suddenly appeared, holding a half full glass of bourbon in his hand. He looked from his brothers, to his niece, to the Salvatores, processing what he was seeing. "I gather that you have informed Damon of E.J.'s parentage," he quipped, "and he did not take it so well?" Finn nodded.
Elijah slowly approached Damon and held out the rest of his glass. Without hesitation, the younger vampire snatched it from his hand and downed the rest of his glass. "I think I'll go make another one," Elijah offered. "Would you like one?" Damon nodded frantically. "It's quite a shock, isn't it?" Elijah asked as he took Damon by the hand and towed him away.
Before anything could be said or done further, Bonnie and Elena came stampeding down the stairs, Bonnie holding E.J.'s grimoire open as she came. "This should do it!" she panted. She hurried into the rough middle of the foyer and chanted some gibberish that E.J. didn't understand.
Bonnie snapped the grimoire shut once she was done. "That spell will keep any paranormal person from entering into the house without invitation," Bonnie babbled to Elena as she headed back toward E.J. "A little modification from vampires, and voila! See?"
"Uh huh," Elena mumbled, pulling her hair up into a ponytail as they walked.
Finn sped over and took Bonnie by the arm, staring deep into her eyes. "How do you know that it will work?" he demanded, his tone cold.
Bonnie met his gaze head on. "It's more than just a spell," she replied. "It's a process that creates a natural barrier that nobody with any touch of magic on them can cross."
The minute the words left her mouth, Bonnie realized what she had just said. "Which includes everybody in this house," she mumbled.
"I'll check it out," Elena offered, turning and trotting toward the front door. Everybody watched in anticipation as Elena stepped out of the large, glass-paned double doors and stood on the other side of the doorsill for a few seconds.
"Here we go!" Elena called in to them as she cautiously stepped over the doorsill. Once she was back inside the house, everybody let out a collective sigh of relief.
"It apparently does not apply to those in the house when the spell is cast," Bonnie informed Finn, glaring up at him. Finn met her fierce gaze easily, and Bonnie finally had to look away. Not even she was brave enough to face down an Original.
After a beat, Kol spoke up, "Has anybody seen Nik?" Finn spun around, his eyes scanning the room for his immediate younger brother. "Thanks, Finn, I hadn't bothered to check!" Kol called to him.
Finn ignored him. "E.J.?" he asked more sharply than he'd intended.
E.J. shrugged as if to say "How should I know?" "I didn't even realize he was gone," she said.
"He'd better be in the house," Finn grumbled, spinning on his heel and marching toward the parlor. He needed a drink, too. All of this on top of dealing with the stress of trying to catch up on nine hundred years of history was giving him a migraine.
Rebekah's room had become her sanctuary, the only place in the house where she truly found solace. She had not bothered to change Niklaus's decorating scheme, since her brother had proved to know her tastes very well. The walls were painted a soft cream and the furniture was a light-wooded oak. An exquisite Persian rug separated Rebekah's colossal king-sized canopy bed with the pale-pink bedspread from the large stone fireplace. She too had a balcony, but her doors were closed due to the heat.
She lay stretched across her bed on her stomach, face buried in a fashion magazine. It was a distraction at best, but the knot in her stomach would not come undone. She had not been upstairs for very long (she really wasn't certain of the time that had passed), but she still felt as if she should have calmed down by now.
She had made a fool of herself in front of Stefan, who had once been the love of her life, his obnoxious brother, that hideous doppelganger girl, and her daughter. Breaking down in front of E.J. once had been bad enough, twice was unforgivable. The girl needed to believe that Rebekah was strong and could handle anything. How could she ever trust her if she kept falling apart?
No matter how many times she admonished herself to pull herself together, her thoughts kept flashing back to those boy's eyes and she would fall into panic again.
There was a gentle knock on her door and she started, flipping herself over and sitting up, scooting to the end of her bed. Before calling out, she closed her eyes to sense for who was at the door and, once she knew who it was, didn't bother trying to make herself look presentable. He had seen her in worse states before.
"Go away, Nik!" she bellowed, hopping down from her bed and trotting into her bathroom. Naturally, her big brother ignored her and came in anyway, the door clicking shut behind him. She closed the bathroom door behind her, nearly in sync with Niklaus, and shuffled over to her vanity and her frameless mirror.
It was as wide as the vanity and nearly reached the ceiling. She sighed as she tried to smooth down her hair and turned her faucet on to cold. She heard soft footsteps approaching the door and her brother let himself in.
"I thought I told you to go away," she snapped without turning around. There was no need since she could see her brother's reflection in the large mirror. Niklaus leaned against the door and studied her reflection in the mirror, face neutral.
"I am going to take a shower," Rebekah informed him, flipping the faucet off, and, without warning, yanked her red tank top over her head. Her brother did not even flinch and she rolled her eyes. Modesty had not been impressed upon them as children and her brother had seen her naked many times, and she him. She would have appreciated some privacy, but she could make do with his presence if he was being obstinate.
"What do you want?" she growled, turning to face her brother, folding her arms to hide her pink-and-black-zebra-striped bra from his sight. Niklaus quirked an eyebrow up at her and she scowled, unfolding her arms and shimmying out of her yoga pants.
"Why are you still here?" she snapped as she wadded her clothing up into a pile and set it beside the shower.
"It is all right to be afraid, Bekky," Niklaus finally spoke, gazing at her as he shifted slightly to face her better. "Bekky" was a name that only Niklaus called her, his pet name for her. It was a hated nickname, since it seemed so childish, but it was also sweet.
As much as she would love to, she could not trust her brother. He had killed their mother in a blind rage and had daggered her in a moment of panic. He had hunted down and daggered her others brothers, and done who-knew-what else. He simply could not be trusted.
She was now blinking rapidly to stem the flow of tears from her eyes, opening the frosted glass shower door to turn the water on. Never had she been so thankful the glass was not clear. Without looking back on her brother, she stepped into the shower with her underclothes still on, shut the door, and quickly finished undressing herself once she was inside.
Niklaus watched as the door opened slightly and his sister deposited the remainder of her clothing on top of the others. "You can't avoid this forever, little sister!" he called to her, annoyance beginning to beat out worry. Why was his baby sister so difficult?
"I'm not leaving until you talk to me!" he continued.
"And I'm not coming out until you leave!" Rebekah snapped back.
"I will come in there if you're more than fifteen minutes!" he threatened.
"You do and Lijah will pulverize you!"
Niklaus hated that she was right. Elijah advocated modesty rigidly and would not stand for his brother invading their sister's privacy. "He wouldn't be too thrilled with you undressing in front of me either!" he shot back.
"Go $*&# yourself!" The water continued to pound, making it harder to keep up a conversation with his sister. He really should leave her alone, but he was stubborn, a trait he shared with his sister. A trait that he had once believed he had inherited from Mikael.
He shoved those thoughts aside as he pushed away from the doorframe. "Fine then!" If Rebekah wanted to be difficult, he could be twice as difficult! "I'll just rummage through all of your girl stuff until you come out."
"It's your eyes!" Rebekah replied. Niklaus glared in the direction of the shower and turned the sink on, splashing his face with water.
Niklaus was trying to come up with another threat to throw at his sister when he sensed a presence behind him. He spun around and took a step back.
The woman standing behind him was taller than he. Her slender body was clothed in dark-denim shorts and a purple tank top. Her coffee-brown skin was deliciously soft and Niklaus found himself admiring her curves. Her dark hair was pulled up into a long ponytail, her dark, penetrating eyes staring at him.
She pursed her plump lips and suddenly blew a kiss at him. Niklaus's eyes widened when he felt a tugging in his gut, and he suddenly found himself back in his sister's bedroom. He leapt up in a panic and sprinted for the bathroom door, but it was locked.
"Rebekah!" He pounded on the door and yanked on it with all of his considerable strength.
It did not budge. "Rebekah!" Either his sister was ignoring him or couldn't hear him over the shower. Considering her hypersensitive hearing, he was betting the former.
This could not be good. Where was a sledgehammer when you needed one? He dashed from the room to locate one of his brothers. Whoever that woman had been, he did not trust her alone in a room with his baby sister!
No matter how hot she was!
TVDTVDTVDTVDTVD
Pandora breathed a sigh of relief once he was gone, closing her eyes and focusing on changing her attire. She had hoped that her appearance would distract the hybrid long enough to allow her to dispose of him.
She needed to speak with the girl alone.
She was now dressed in a simple white shift that hugged her frame, much more comfortable than the shorts and tank top.
The shower suddenly shot off and Pandora heard a sigh from inside it. "Okay, fine, Nik," came the vampire's voice. "I'll talk to you now, if you promise not to be an ass." A pause. "Can you get me a towel, please? I, uh, forgot to grab one."
Pandora swiftly turned on her heel and quickly located the built-in linen closet. Rebekah must have heard her footsteps. "Nik?" she asked hesitantly. "Is that you?" The shower door jiggled for a moment before stopping. "Who's out there?"
She must have sensed that Pandora's footsteps were lighter than the hybrid's. Pandora opened the linen closet and took out two towels, trotting back toward the shower. She opened the door and passed them to the girl inside, who cautiously took them.
"I don't know who you are," the girl called, "but this is seriously twisted." She paused. "E.J.?"
Pandora did not answer.
After a few minutes, the door opened once more and the vampire snatched her clothing pile up from the floor. It closed again with a snap and Pandora settled back to wait.
When Rebekah finally did step out, her hair was wrapped up with one of the towels, the soft blue one, and her clothing looked damp in places. Changing in a recently used shower was a bad idea, but clearly the girl was not going to step out knowing that somebody was in the bathroom with her.
Rebekah frowned when she saw Pandora, looking her up and down. "Who are you?" she snapped, her tone dangerous.
Pandora smiled. "My name is Pandora," she introduced herself smoothly. "And I believe you have already met my son?"
Rebekah stared at her, blinking slowly. "Huh?" she huffed after a moment.
Pandora took a step forward and took one of Rebekah's hands in hers. "There are things you still need to know," she said softly. "I am going to take you to one who can tell you."
Rebekah glared. "Look, lady. I don't know who you are but—Holy *&#%!"
Pandora had only fazed a Living person to the Other Side one other time, and that had been her last time. She had sworn to never do it again, but this was a special case. She could have told the girl herself, but she felt somebody Rebekah knew and had once loved should do the honors.
Rebekah looked around the Other Side in fright. "What the *(^% is going on?!" she demanded. "Where the hell am I?!"
"You're on the Other Side, Rebekah." Rebekah spun around and her eyes widened.
Gloria smiled at her. "I have some things to tell you, darling," the witch said sadly. "Perhaps I can finally find peace if I do."
Rebekah was definitely not in Kansas anymore.
AN: I have no clue when I'll update again! Review if you'd like and spur me on to continue working on this. Thanks for reading!