THE SIXTEEN HOURS IT TAKES to drive to New Orleans is an experience that has deja vu skittering over Elena's skin as the car rumbles over the road and the night gives way to the day once again.
The pair stop every few hours to pull over to rest stops to allow Hayley a couple minutes to stretch and take care of other human activities Elena doesn't have to worry about anymore. Has forgotten about them, in truth. She was confused when Hayley first mentioned pulling over to the next rest stop, until the werewolf bluntly confessed that she needed to pee.
( Her switch is on, but she still feels her humanity slipping through her fingers. )
Regardless, it's a difference that Elena clings on to desperately, grounds herself with. She fears that if she doesn't, she'll sink into the memory of her and Rebekah driving through the country, never stopping, never speaking yet somehow sharing that innate understanding.
( That they are both so similar that they want to tear each other apart for it. )
( They have never been good at staring at their own reflections. )
At their second rest stop, and hopefully their last, Elena summons up the last shred of courage she thinks she has and opens up her bag, withdrawing her phone that contains a pound of worried, frantic messages and stones of regret, sorrow and grief.
With trembling hands, she turns her phone back on, and it vibrates like an earthquake in her palm as it's flooded with an influx of missed calls and texts and it takes everything she still has left in her broken, bloody body to not turn it right back off again.
She checks the calls first. Sees over a hundred from Damon, bordering on two hundred, right at the top. Of course. He can't stand to be anything but first on her list.
( Doesn't realise he is slowly slipping right off it. )
Caroline comes second: a hundred and sixty-seven missed calls. At least another hundred have voicemails. Elena shifts her eyes down the roster, refusing to think about hearing her best friend's voice again.
Refuses to allow Mystic Falls to drag her back.
Bonnie's name is slotted right under Caroline's, only behind by one single call. She leaves more voicemails than Caroline.
Stefan is last. He leaves exactly eighty missed calls, and each and every one has a voicemail attached.
They are the only names.
They are the only ones still alive.
Elena swallows, clicks out of the app and shoves her phone back in her bag. Hayley walks out of the gas station and Elena thinks to herself that she'll look at the texts later. When she's a little bit braver, a little less raw and broken.
( Wonders if that will ever happen. )
The rest of the journey with Hayley is peppered with little talk, the crinkle of bags of candy being opened, and the bass of the radio as Hayley flicks through channels. Elena lets her with no protests, mouth full of cotton balls at the memory of fighting with Jeremy about who got to control the radio.
Hayley sees the tears shining in Elena's eyes, but says nothing. Elena has never known companionship like Hayley's: silence and solitude, but a warm, firm presence at her side. In Mystic Falls, there is constant noise, constant chatter, constant questions of are you okay? and do you need me to stay?
They wear their hearts on their sleeves in her little hometown, and perhaps that's why they bled so much.
( Should've listened to her father when he said to guard her heart. )
( Which father? )
"What does blood taste like?" Hayley questions when they cross the Louisiana border and the words are so foreign in the air, it takes Elena more than a handful of heartbeats to process the question.
"You really wanna know?" Elena asks back, keeps her cards close to her chest, calculates and plots and plans like she's always done, "I thought you didn't want me to feed in front of you."
Hayley shrugs and places another candy in her mouth. "Just because I don't like seeing it doesn't mean I'm not interested. I asked Ty, but he'd never tell me. So, what does blood taste like?"
Elena wets her lips, considers. Fears. "Like water after you've had a really hot day. Like . . . the best thing you've ever tasted. But it's too rich sometimes, like you've eaten too much cake or cream."
"Do you like blood?"
Hayley's eyes are burning into her, piercing like she's had to strike first before they did, and Elena keeps her gaze on the road, keeps her shields up. "Sometimes."
She doesn't say anything further, but she feels the shift in the air. The olive branch that Hayley grapples onto.
They keep on driving through Louisiana and they pull over in the city just before they hit New Orleans. Elena makes her way towards the closest hospital to stock up on her stash of blood bags, hesitates for a second at leaving Hayley alone with the car and the money and the chance to leave and not look back, but keeps her feet moving, forces herself to trust.
( And wonders when it became so hard for her to do so. )
While she steals the blood bags, her phone buzzes with a single message. She goes still, so still even the air is afraid to touch her, and Elena thinks she dies and comes back to life all over again. She clenches her jaw and keeps digging through the blood bags and slinks back into the afternoon and doesn't look at her phone.
Hayley leans over the hood of the car when Elena returns, the map she bought back in Virginia spread out, fingers running over the New Orleans street with a certain sort of longing Elena has the terrible misfortune of understanding.
"Hayley," she calls, "I'm done. Ready to go again?"
Hayley swiftly packs up the map and shoves it into her jacket like it's too precious for Elena to see for long. Like if she shows Elena the map, she also shows the vampire the map to the arteries and veins in her bruised heart.
"Give me the keys. I can do this last bit."
Elena hands over the keys with no protest. Was willing to pass over driving duty ten hours back, but wasn't willing to poke and prod at their newborn alliance.
Hayley drives onto the highway and Elena rests her head against the window and thinks, because her thoughts are the only things she has control over anymore.
Thinks about how the Elena she was before, Elena-the-cheerleader, Elena-the-straight-A-student, Elena-the-future-Miss-Mystic-Falls, would've been scandalised to see what Elena-the-last-one-left is doing. But Elena stopped giving a fuck about her opinion the day Jeremy died.
They enter New Orleans in the late afternoon, and Elena uses her phone to find a nice hotel for them to stay in. The streets of New Orleans are bright and alive with light and music and magic, with secrets and lies and hedonism. Its claws scrape over Elena's skin.
Elena has to practically drag Hayley to the hotel so they can check in, using the stolen money to reserve two adjoining rooms overlooking the Mississippi. Elena moves to take their meagre two bags between them upstairs to their room, but Hayley places her hand on Elena's shoulder. The move shocks her: she thinks it's the first time they've touched.
"You can stay here," Hayley says and Elena sees the shine in her eyes: eager and childlike like she's been given a day off school and not in the city where her long-lost family may be, "But I'm gonna start looking for my family. Ask around, that kinda thing. I'll come back later tonight."
Elena thins her lips, before sighing and handing Hayley the other key. "Use this to get in. I hope you find something."
Hayley smiles and it's genuine—Elena has no option but to return it. "I hope I do too. See ya, Elena."
ELENA SPENDS THE AFTERNOON IN the hotel suite, wandering and exploring and once she's taken thorough stock of the toiletries in the bathroom she'll never use, she spreads out on her plush, cool sheets and flicks on an episode of some show she used to love but never got around to watching again after— well.
Minutes tick by and episodes go and before Elena knows it, the sun has set and she thinks her mind has gone numb from watching some poor woman get cheated on three times and keeps going back to the man.
She sighs, clicks off the tv, and screams into a pillow.
When she first joined Hayley on her 'road trip', she'd never thought she'd end up in a pristine hotel room with absolutely fuck-all to do.
The setting sun ripples over the bedsheets. Elena thinks about how it's been four days since she's left Mystic Falls, left behind her family and friends and everything she's ever known.
It strikes her then: that she finally has no more strings or hands or someone telling what to do, who to be, and she is spending it in a hotel room watching vapid reality TV when she could be out on the streets of New Orleans.
( Ever since she was a little girl, New Orleans has been on her Top Ten Places to Go. When she was twelve, her family had prepared to make a trip there for a week during the summer, but it was cancelled when both Elena and Jeremy fell ill. )
She springs to her feet, slides her bag back over her shoulders again, ignoring the weight of missed calls and texts as she clicks on her text thread with Hayley. It's stark white and blank, and reminds Elena of how new this all is.
I'm going out. I'll ask around about your family.
There. Text sent. Feels wrong, somehow. Feels too cold and clinical for what they're embarking on, for the new identity Elena is cautiously stepping into, wriggling and writhing in the skin to see if it fits her like a prom dress.
She takes the key and reminds herself that Hayley took her own when she left and closes the door behind her. The click of the lock behind soothes some anxious eighteen-year-old in her that she thought died long ago.
The setting sun is warm like butter against Elena's skin as she treks through New Orleans' cobbled street, chasing the scent of spices and herbs as her mouth waters and her stomach grumbles. She pays for a few beignets with some money she pilfered from the money bag back at the hotel and hums in soft contentment as she snacks on them in the midst of her meandering.
The French Quarter is subsumed in a riot of colour and culture that lines the streets like they could never belong anywhere else—like these ancient streets are the only thing that could handle the echo of their bloody, beautiful histories. Elena reaches out, brushes her hands up against the red bricks and wonders who walked these stones before her.
She tilts up her head and sniffs: there's the metallic scent of magic in the air.
To her, magic never seems to smell the same each and every time. When she was human, it would often shift between something warm and buttery like an apple pie over her tongue or something rich and rustic like well-done steak. The one and only time she didn't like the scent of magic was during the ritual, when it was bitter and sharp as she breathed it up her nose.
When she became a vampire, Elena could decipher the finer notes of scent, and soon after she first turned, she'd spend days holed up in Bonnie's room, desperately trying to acclimate to all these new sensations that barraged her incessantly. The witch had left the newborn vampire curl up on her bed without complaint, shuffling through homework and the pair could almost pretend life was normal again.
In those days, Bonnie's magic often smelled of mangos or kiwis or strawberries or some other kind of fruit. As the months progressed, Bonnie's magic would fluctuate, but Elena could always tell that it was magic and not some trick of the mind by the underlying metallic scent—it tasted like the moments before a storm.
Here, it smells like steel and smoke, like sin and salvation, like blood and war.
Elena lets the winding streets lure her in more and more, and the magic becomes thicker and thicker in the air, nearly clogging up her throat. Her surroundings pulse with an inherent life and energy she hasn't felt since before her parents died ( and then everyone else died too ).
The magic swarms her, tickling her skin, coating her tongue. It presses and pushes against her, prodding and poking, curious and intrigued much like a child when faced with something new and shiny. It wonders, ponders, imagines on who she is, what she is, why she is.
Elena doesn't need anyone to tell her she's stumbled on witch territory.
Women walk over stones like they're gliding on water, and the branches of trees lean over them, twigs desperate to touch them. Their eyes are dark and knowing.
They are nothing like Bonnie and yet all too much the same.
There's something whispering in Elena's ear and she snaps her head to the source. There's a woman—a witch —sitting at a table, bowls and bones and blood gems strewn across the top like a jigsaw puzzle. She's wrinkled like bark, dark like shadows, powerful like a storm.
( Elena thinks this is what Bonnie will look like in fifty years time. Elena will look no different. )
( She will still look like Katherine. )
The woman crooks a wizened, wicked finger and Elena feels that tug in her gut, yanking her forwards, forwards, forwards until the witch cracks open her jaws to show serrated teeth and swallows her whole.
( The witch doesn't know Elena's already been eaten alive. Doesn't know that she stood back up anyway. )
But Elena Gilbert is the doppelganger , and no magic ever works right with her. The string doesn't pull Elena forward, and the vampire remains standing resolute, meeting the witch's stare point blank. She's dealt with too many monsters and struck deals with too many devils to be afraid of this woman.
Something flares in the witch's gaze and Elena begins to doubt, begins to think maybe she should be afraid.
( This is witch is no Bonnie; this witch is not afraid to eat hearts whole. )
That survival instinct that has been whispering in her ear the moment she was born, the voice that has always sounded like Katherine but she was never able to realise it until Elena came face to face with her, beckons her onwards.
Pick your battles. Don't piss off a witch, especially one like that old bitch.
Elena moves through a crowd that seems to part for like the Red Sea, but she doesn't think about it. She takes a seat at the witch's table. The pair sit in silence and consider each other for a handful of heartbeats.
"You're a witch," Elena says bluntly, if only to break the silence.
"I am Agnes," the witch says and plucks a string from her mess of an altar and twines it around her well-worn fingers.
Elena purses her lips as a deal ( a promise ) rebounds in her skull. "Have you heard about a werewolf pack around these parts? Maybe in the last twenty years?"
"Wolves come and go through these parts."
There's a hidden message slotted between the words Agnes says and Elena takes a moment to run them over in her mind and then files them away for later. It's dangerous to be off guard when around a witch like this.
"Yeah, but a pack ," Elena pushes, leans forward and her hair brushes against a bone. She jolts back like she's been electrocuted, "Uh . . . okay. But a pack that stays here. Maybe they moved, but they were here for a significant amount of time. Somebody has to know something. "
Agnes crooks a crooked brow. "Information comes at a price."
Elena finds herself treading on a thin line between her heart and her mind these days. Her heart wins so many times nowadays as her irritation froths over the cauldron of her patience. "Then why did you call me over? To haggle ?"
Agnes' black eyes dig into Elena, peeling back skin and muscle till she finds the deformed, bloody mass that Elena still calls a heart. "Spirits talk."
Elena straightens, digs her teeth that ache to be fangs into her bottom lips. "I'm a vampire now. I can't help with sacrifices, nor can Klaus make any more hybrids. I'm useless."
Agnes smiles like she knows something. "Perhaps. But there are other ways."
Elena's brows jump up her forehead, her mouth unhinging as she looses a disbelieving scoff. " How? "
( There's a little bit of fear too; she's so tired of being used. )
"Nature has its loopholes—you and the hybrid being the most recent examples."
Like many things witches say, it comes layered with more than one meaning. Elena does not have the patience to pick it apart like she usually does.
"Can you tell me anything about this pack? Or am I just wasting my time here?"
Agnes falls silent and just stares and stares and stares. Elena unleashes a snarl—something she has never done before—and feels the tell-tale veins crawling over her cheeks as she leaps to her feet. She pushes the monster down and the veins sink back into her skin and she whirls, determined to leave and go back to the hotel room. She is so done with today.
But, Agnes lashes out, brittle fingers coiling around Elena's wrist like clamping irons. Elena gasps at the cold, frigid sensation that bolts through her at the point of contact. Her eyes connect with Agnes' and she is lost in a dark, dark forest.
"I recommend Rousseau's on Bourbon Street. They have a truly delicious gumbo."
Agnes lets go of Elena and the vampire stumbles back. Elena heaves for air as her heart stumbles like piano keys in her chest and she stares at Agnes, mouth opening and closing and tongue lashing as she tries to find words but oh God what was that —
The string tangled between Agnes' fingers snaps. Elena doesn't look back as she feels the witch territory with supernatural speeds.
"I DIDN'T SEE YOUR TEXT till now," Hayley says as she peeks her head through the adjoining door of their suites, "Sorry. Did you find anything?"
Elena is curled up in her bed, exactly where she's been for the past hour. She's gone through five blood bags trying to remove the phantom sensation of Agnes' hand on her. As it is, it takes Elena a couple seconds to find the words to speak.
"Elena?" Hayley prompts. Too many seconds.
"Y-Yeah," Elena says, clearing her throat, "I talked to a witch. She was being really, y'know, weird, but I think we might find something at a bar called Rousseau's on Bourbon Street? It's the only clue I got."
Hayley's eyes gleam and she steps into the room, sliding into the chair next to Elena's bedside. "That's more than I got. All the witches I talked to couldn't tell me anything."
"What about vampires? Or other werewolves?"
Hayley shakes her head and something grave falls over her features. "Vampires are bad news here. I think one'll come by and talk to you about the rules soon, but they're not too extreme, I guess. It's really only the witches that suffer from them. Just follow the rules, and you won't get hurt."
Elena blinks. "Fun."
"As for werewolves, the last time I was in New Orleans, I gathered that all of them had been chased out around the time I was born. I've heard rumours that there are a couple still hanging around, though."
"Aren't you in danger, then? Since all the werewolves got chased and are still afraid enough that they're on the outskirts of society?"
Hayley shrugs. "First time round, one of Marcel's vampires came up to me and said that as long as I didn't hurt any vampires or tourists when I shifted, and I didn't make any trouble with the witches, they didn't really care what I did. I also can't live here permanently, but that might have to change soon."
Elena chuckles softly. Hayley tilts her head. "What's so funny?"
"Nothing—it's just, I think New Orleans might still be less complicated than Mystic Falls."
It takes a moment, but Hayley's small smile develops into a chuckle and then turns into a giggle and then into full-out laughter. Elena laughs so hard she cries.
( She cries until she sobs and Hayley's crying too and they're both abandoned girls who never really had anyone to depend on because everyone always depended on them so they had to be strong and brave and so they're weak with each other and they fall asleep with tear-stained faces and tangled in each other's arms like vines. )
ROUSSEAU'S SMELLS LIKE OLD spices and tastes like warmth and the smoke off of homemade food. It almost feels like home, but appearances can be deceiving. Elena knows this all too well.
( She is a living manifestation of it. )
The bar is mostly empty, peppered with a few sparse patrons here and there. It's not exactly surprising considering how early it is in the morning. Hayley had woken first, so by the time Elena had blinked her eyes open no more than fifteen minutes later, Hayley was already showered and dressed and making plans for the day. The first item on her list was visiting Rousseau's, and Elena took extra care in the shower that morning to scrub at her wrist. She thinks she can still feel the cold burning into her.
( Neither make any mention of the dry tears they had to wipe from their face. )
Hayley pays no heed to other patrons, and marches right up to the bartop where a dark-haired woman is wiping down. Her hair covers her face, but Elena is willing to bet the rest of her blood bags on the woman being a witch.
She is a little more hesitant to approach. Notices the heavy scent of grief clinging to the bartender's skin.
"Hi," Hayley says, keeping her voice pitched low to avoid the other customers from eavesdropping and Elena sidles up to her side, "I'm looking for help."
The woman looks up and her eyes gleam like black stars.
"Sure, honey," the woman—the witch—replies, but it's a lacklustre response, layered by exhaustion that goes bone-deep, that sucks life out of you better than Elena can suck someone dry, "What'd you need? Directions? I'm Jane-Anne, by the way."
"Agnes told us to come here."
Elena almost regrets telling Hayley the witch's name when the temperature plummets in the bar. Elena's skin prickles as the eyes of the other patrons—witches, too—turn to the pair. She tenses, preparing to scoop Hayley up and get out of here as fast as possible.
The friendliness melts from Jane-Anne's face, replaced by a fathomless stare. She raises a hand and waves it in a dismissive gesture. In eerie unison, the witches return to their conversations, but Elena is under no illusions.
They could paralyse both of them faster than Elena could blink.
( She has never been more aware of her youth. )
"My elder," Jane-Anne intones deeply, voice layered with something older than the stones they stand on, "Did she why you needed me?"
"You have delicious gumbo," Elena comments drily, and can't help but feel a bit bitter for being petrified so deeply over a fucking restaurant recommendation.
Something flickers over Jane-Anne's face, but it disappears quicker than Elena can catch hold of it. "Hey, Soph!"
"Yeah?" A softer, quieter voice responds and Elena watches as a witch emerges from the back. That similar scent of sorrow and regret clouds her like a hurricane, beating back anyone who tries to get close.
"I need two bowls of gumbo for these two ladies."
Soph's eyes shift to Elena's in absent-mindedness, but as soon as their eyes collide, Elena senses something shift in the air. Sees how Sophie's eyes widen, her face pales, her jaw unhinges. The lights flicker in the bar.
( She holds back the urge to slide a hand over her belly. )
"Soph? Sophie!"
Even Elena flinches at Jane-Anne's shout and comes back to the earth with the sensation of Hayley's hand clamping down on her shoulder. As Jane-Anne swarms her friend, Elena turns towards Hayley, prevents herself from slumping into the werewolf because oh God, she's so tired.
"What happened, Elena? You and the witch locked eyes and went all weird," Hayley demands, eyes searching Elena's pinched face with something reminiscent of concern. Elena tries to remind herself that it's because Elena is Hayley's ticket to anything with compulsion and a helpful bargaining chip if the need arises.
( Her blood is useless now, but some people still want her face, her life. )
"I-I don't know," Elena answers truthfully, "Maybe she did some kinda spell on me? God, I don't know. "
Hayley looses something that could've been a growl, but Elena chalks it up to her own delusion. It wouldn't be the first time after all.
( Remembers days when Klaus locked her up like Beauty and he the Beast; they both played their roles to perfection. )
( But this is not a fairytale. It never has been. )
"What the fuck ?" Hayley barks at Jane-Anne over the bar, "What the hell did you do to Elena?"
"Nothing," Jane-Anne bites back. Sophie is nowhere to be seen, "She's a doppelganger. Her innate magic must've collided with Sophie by accident. It happens sometimes."
The words sound clumsy in Jane-Anne's mouth, like they don't quite belong. But Elena feels too queasy to dig any further.
"What innate magic ?" Hayley demands.
"When the Mikaelson Witch made vampires, she essentially turned the Petrova doppelgangers into incredibly absorbent sponges. Not only do they have the incredible power inside them to literally rewrite reality , they can soak up any magic they've been around. Your friend's got a thousand years of magic inside her written into her DNA, and whatever else she absorbed since she's been born. Vampire or no, she can't get rid of that kind of magic."
"Yay," Elena says quietly, head resting against the bar top. God, this is really turning out to be shit day and it's not even nine.
"So, her and Sophie's magic colliding? That doesn't make any sense."
"Hayley," Elena groans, "Stop. They're gonna kick us out."
"Listen to your vampire. She sounds like someone with some common sense."
Hayley actually growls this time ( but Elena wouldn't be surprised if she was hallucinating ) and the hand she had splayed out on Elena's back shifts to the vampire's bicep. Gently, she pulls the girl to her feet. "C'mon, Elena, we're leaving. We won't find anything here."
The witches of Rousseau's watch her go. She can hear Sophie crying in the kitchen.
THE NIGHT IS DARK AND heavy and the stars don't come out tonight. They are too afraid of what happens below, are too scared to witness what women of fire and forest are discussing.
Death hangs heavy in the air, and the dead are silent but watchful as witches walk between their graves. Lafayette Cemetery is a black place tonight.
For the witches of the French Quarter, it's the only place they're really safe—no vampires can cross the border and their ancestors mirror their footsteps from the afterlife, guiding them with a pale hand on the shoulder.
"So, it's true, then?" A wizened witch asks. Her body bears the wrinkles and weather of middle-age, but the coven knows she watches soldiers march to war during the 1940s.
The only people older than her are the elders, and they have lived through both World Wars, and so many more.
Sophie Deveraux is revealed, meek and trembling. Her magic is weak, her loyalties weaker. She is an outcast in all but name.
She nods. "Y-Yes. I felt it when I saw her today."
"You are sure?" Another witch calls, young this time, barely twenty.
"Of course she's sure." Jane-Anne Deveraux, a childless mother ( oh, what a thing so terrible it has no name ) but a protector all the same. "This is Sophie's gift, and it's never wrong. The doppelganger is pregnant."
"But she's a vampire, " a voice calls from the back of the crowd, "She's dead. How can she be pregnant?"
Jane-Anne opens her mouth to call back, but Elder Agnes shuffles over stone and the coven falls quiet. Even the dead stand still. "The doppelganger walks between this world and the next, balances on the line of the possible and impossible. Even Nature has no hold on her. Death is but a minor offence to her. She is pregnant with the Hybrid's offspring."
A wave of mutters and mumbles ripples through the coven, laced with fear and greed and other disgusting, human things. Agnes raises a hand, and quiet falls.
"I must be clear with you, my brethren: this fruit of the Mikaelson dynasty will have consequences unseen and unforetold. You know of Doomsday; it shall arrive at the moment of the babe's birth. It has the blood of a vampire, werewolf, and witch coursing through their veins—its power is only amplified by the doppelganger nature of its mother."
"We should kill it!" A witch calls and cheers and jeers rise. Agnes' lips pinch in displeasure and one of her disciples snaps his fingers and an invisible muzzle cinches over the crowd.
"We shall," Agnes demurs, "But we must have patience. If we play our cards right, we can use this abomination to our advantage. Marcel and his vampires have plagued this city for nearly a century, and in all that time, we have failed to run them out. Now, with this pregnancy, we can lure Klaus Mikaelson here and convince him that Marcel must be overthrown.
Do not fret; the babe, mother and the father shall be killed before it takes its first breath. The Mikaelson Family will wither into ashes and vampires shall no longer plague this world. The earth shall return to the witches."
Even the moon cannot bear to hear it anymore, but the trees lean in closer.