Her low whistling reverberates off the cold white walls, the hallway filling with the sound. Every step she takes is measured, her gait slow and unhurried, her small hands tucked into the pockets of her loosely fitted jeans. Hanne navigates the hospital with ease, taking her time to peek into the rooms that interested her.
Each bland painting she passed only bored her, the lack of life in the decorations giving Hanne the idea that this is where people truly go to die. Everything about the air felt sad and stale, the world within the hospital slowing to a crawl as she turned the corner. A silver line, thin and fragile, seemed to sprout from her chest and pull tauter with every step. Not before long, it led Hanne to a lonely-looking room.
The whirring of machines melted into the forced soft breathing coming from the body in front of her. In the center of the room was a bed, and on the bed lay an older woman, her dark brown hair growing grey at the temples. An oxygen mask cradled the lower half of her face, her eyes closed despite Hanne's presence. Hanne's whistling trailed off, and the sides of her mouth turned down.
Her name was Margret. Aged forty-five, mother of three. Worked at an animal shelter, spent a lot of her time doing things for other people. Well, she had until she'd fallen into a coma nearly a year ago.
And Hanne was here to kill her.
She double-checked the silver line. Flashing beneath the fluorescent lights like mercury, it still lingered in the air between Hanne and Margret. Hanne pursed her lips and walked over to Margret's prone figure. Her hands were protected by beaten leather gloves, once perfect black now faded and scratched from years of use. Hanne's fingers walked their way up Margret's chilled arm, passing her shoulder and resting just above her sweaty forehead. Out of habit, Hanne brushed a few sweat-laden strands of hair away from Margaret's face before peeling the oxygen mask away.
For a moment, Hanne just looked at her. Took in her crow's feet, her laugh lines. The sunspots that had gathered over the years. Her hand traced the side of Margret's face, cupping it gently and using her other hand to part her mouth. She licked her lips and surged forward, unable to help herself. An inch before their lips could touch, Hanne stopped, taking in a breath so deep it was like her lungs were about to burst. Like the plume of white smoke, Margret's soul bled into the air only to be sucked into Hanne's waiting mouth.
The color leeched from Margret's face. Her once rosy cheeks turned ashen, the tension in her body from years of fighting to hold on finally leaving her. There was a peacefulness in death, one that Hanne had seen first hand, over and over as her targets left this world. Any weariness they felt, any pain, it all disappeared the moment she took their soul.
Hanne wouldn't fool herself into thinking she was doing a selfless act. She wasn't taking them to Heaven or Hell, wasn't there simply to relieve them of their hurt. At the end of the day, Hanne was here to eat. To fuel herself, keep her fire burning bright by snuffing out theirs. Those of the supernatural variety had the Other Side. Humans...humans had her and her kind.
Of course, some humans moved on to whatever their Other Side was. In fact, most went free. There simply weren't enough of her kind to consume the souls of the entire human population. There's no rhyme or reason as to why some people get picked for consumption. The silver line appears when it wants, regardless of age or the person's supposed purity. It didn't even need to be followed. Hanne could pluck the soul from their corpse if she wanted. She just appreciated how fresh a soul was right on the verge of death.
She pulled away from Margaret's body the second her heart rate machine began to race before falling flat. Without a backward glance, Hanne turned and walked out of the room, whistling once more.
It was with great amusement that the car she'd been given for her sixteenth birthday was a hearse. Her parents had a sick sense of humor, it was true. Then again, their house was part morgue and funeral home, it made sense to have one laying around. Did she use it to cart around dead bodies, whisking them off to be buried beneath the earth under the eyes of crying family members? Not usually, no. Mostly, she used it to drive to the book store or whatever coffee shop was open during her random outings.
At twenty-three, Hanne's days were usually filled with her college courses and endless studying. She needed to get into medical school, if only for appearance's sake. People liked facts and logic to back up why a person died; many didn't just accept someone saying they just know that Mr. Smith from down the street slipped on the tile of his bathroom, and then he choked on his tongue when he hit the floor.
Her family had grown to be experts in hiding what they were. Her father had become a Forensic Pathologist who 'settled' for being a mortician, and her mother ran a funeral home. Souls to consume came in endless supply for them. Plucking one from the shining drawers in the morgue room was her family's version of searching for a bottle of wine. The rest of the neighborhood just assumed her family was full of really dedicated goths, not that they were supernatural creatures who ate spirits.
Hanne pulled into her street, the sight of her deep burgundy house bringing a sense of safety. It stood tall, proudly painted by her mother's spidery fingers, each window and doorframe meticulously picked out by a critical eye. The front lawn boasted endless rows of wildflowers, the carefully cultivated grounds choking with color. Her favorite magnolia tree was planted right next to her window, and she smiled wistfully at it.
An iron-wrought gate kept the outside world from the house, her adoptive brother's spell works only allowing those welcomed to pass the gates. It created a barrier around the home, those unwelcomed stuck feeling wary at the very sight of it. Outside of the gate and to the left was the driveway, kept void of flowers due to her brother's reckless driving. Her parents and brother must have been out, the usual space empty of their black cars. Just as she's getting out of her car, Stefan's red Porsche pulled up next to her.
Any happiness she felt at seeing her friend was dashed as his demonic brother Damon got out of the passenger seat, his glacier blue eyes narrowed on her. Hanne scowled back at him, wondering if it was too late to get in her car and drive away. Despite it being her own home, Hanne didn't want to be there if He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named is going to be there. Seeing her expression, Stefan smiled nervously as he jogged over to her.
A cold sting built in the back of her throat, much like the brittle winter air. It was the signature of the undead; sharper than a ghost's presence, like popping a mint before drinking ice cold water. A second joined it when Damon shut the door.
Unlike his brother's Prince Charming look, Damon looked every inch the bad boy he thought himself to be. A handsome man with inky black locks and piercing blue eyes, a gaze so much colder than Stefans. Stefan ran his hand through his caramel-colored hair, his Lapis Lazuli ring glinting in the setting sun. Bathed in soft oranges and reds, and an earnest expression, he is someone Hanne knows she can trust.
"Hanne, hey, we need your help with something Stefan said, juniper green eyes glancing at the space where her parent's cars should be.
"You brought your brother to my home? Stefan, that's just cruel. " Hanne slammed her car door with excessive force, wishing Damon's head had been between the door and the frame. It'd probably squish like a grape, she thought with a wry grin.
"I don't want to be here either, Miss Wednesday Addams," Damon snapped. "But this is a life and death situation, and you seem to have the death part down."
"Stefan, tell your brother not to talk to me," Hanne said firmly.
Hanne didn't have enough energy to hate many people. She didn't even have enough energy to love many people. But she loved Stefan, and she loathed his dumbass brother. Stefan and she have been friends since she was nineteen, having met at a bookstore in the Philosophy section. It'd taken weeks of coaxing him with strawberry croissants and talks about mortality to get him to open up. When she'd finally spilled the beans that she knew exactly what he was, that's when they let each other in.
After years of not having any friends, Hanne thought she'd finally found the right formula to make some. Stefan told her all about his life, his chaotic brother, Katherine- everything. She did her best to do the same, though she'd kept one very specific detail from him to avoid this exact conversation.
"Why didn't you tell me you remember your past life?" Stefan blurted. He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, his shoulders hunching in. "And that you knew an Original?"
That was a bomb of a question. Hanne didn't really remember her past life- lives, actually- she remembered random bits and pieces that would never make up a complete picture. The lives she lived before were doomed to be incomplete. What she remembered could be equated to recalling random facts on a Snapple lid. Most of what she knew held the emotional weight of a bowling ball. Forgive her if she didn't want to talk about it in a coffee shop full of humans.
"Oh yeah, 'knew' an Original. She knocked around with him for God's sake, I don't think it gets any more personal than that!" Damon rolled his eyes, coming to stand at his brother's side. "We don't have time for this, either ask her, or I will!"
"I have no idea who you're talking about, Stefan. Honestly. I didn't tell you because nobody ever believes me, and when they do, they try to use me for some underhanded scheme. But I promise I don't know who you're talking about." Hanne rested against her car, eyeing Damon warily.
"Can you help us save Elena or not?" Damon asked impatiently.
Ah. Elena. The doppelgänger; the copy of a copy.
It's always Elena.
"I might. What do you need me to do?" Hanne sighed. It was as close to a yes as Damon was going to ever get from her.
"Whatever happens, just know that I'd never put you in danger-" Stefan began, eyes begging for her to understand.
"We don't have time for your empathy, Stefan. We need to spirit her away before Elena finds out that elixir doesn't work." Damon flashes behind her, his cold hands gripping the back of her neck.
Personally, Stefan's empathy was what she liked about him. It was something she felt she lacked. Damon's fingers sank deeper despite Hanne's hiss of pain. Black spots danced across her vision as she looked helplessly at her friend, silently begging for this to be a terrible dream. But the betrayal proved to be real when like a candle, Hanne flickered out and into the black.
There's a hood over her head she is sure is made of burlap with how it scratches at her skin. She wants to scream at Stefan for putting it over her head- he knows she thinks burlap is fucking ugly and that it's meant for a ranch and not some kidnapping situation. But mostly she wants to scream at Stefan for causing the ache in her chest. For making her feel like her heart is ripping in two.
She'd been so happy when they'd finally become friends. Elated to see that her reaching hands had finally been caught and that someone had been reaching for her in return. That she'd been wanted.
She hated Stefan at that moment for ruining that feeling for her.
Hanne thrashes in his hold. Her hands had been tied together, and not even the familiar scent of Stefan's soft shirt can calm the wild fury building in her veins. She strikes him across the face with her nails, raking just beneath his eye. Stefan grunts but doesn't drop her, only shushing her like a frazzled parent would a disobedient child.
"She's more of a wild cat than I thought she would be," Damon says dryly.
"Don't be scared, Hanne, I promise I have a plan." Stefan tries to assure her, squeezing her tighter against him.
She wants so badly to trust him. The ache in her neck and head might be tampering with her decision-making skills, but Hanne sags against him, going limp as a doll. She feels Stefan slam a car door shut with his foot, his movement jostling her only slightly. Energy hums beneath her skin, clawing, pulling, begging to ignite. Instead, she snuffs it and asks him the question that's been running through her mind since she came to.
"Where are we going, Stefan?" Her whisper is futile, Damon's snort confirms it.
"You're being kidnapped by two vampires and you're okay with that? What a prize, Stef." Damon sounded closer like he was just within reach if she could extend her leg and stomp on his chest with it.
"Does your brother ever shut up?" Hanne snapped, trying to kick out where she thinks Damon might be. Her beaten sneaker catches on a solid chest, and she sneers viciously beneath her hood with triumph.
Damon's hand catches on her ankle, and she knows without a shadow of a doubt that if Stefan hadn't been there, he would have broken it. Stefan whispers in her ear, something low that she doesn't listen to, some half-baked plan that involves her and Elena. Elena was set to be ritually sacrificed by some crazy vampire who claimed to be an Original- one of the first of his kind. Apparently, he and Hanne had some sort of history together.
Hanne doubts it was a good one if she doesn't remember a lick of it.
When Stefan finally sets her on the ground and pulls her hood off, she's left wincing against a harsh orange light. The scent of smoke filled her nostrils, almost thick enough to choke on. A perfect circle of fire trapped a person in each of them, two of the bodies slumped on the ground and going cold. She could feel that one had been a vampire by the cold chill that pulsates in the back of her head.
Something feral wafted off of the second fallen body, and Hanne tentatively placed her under the 'werewolf' category. Even as a corpse, the sheer force of changechangeshift radiating off of the dead blonde woman was telling. The full moon greeted her when she chanced a glance and she pursed her lips. Hanne would bet everything she had that the last girl standing, encased by a ring of fire, was the copy. She was waifish and looked so young as she shook, her puppy dog eyes wide and locked on Stefan. She was tragically beautiful at that moment, surrounded by bodies.
A sharp inhale alerts her to the presence of another. Locking eyes with him, she's gobsmacked by the sensations she feels from him. Cold, but the ice was chased by a barely-there heat. Warm, only to get chased out by a glacier chill. Over and over, two warring states doused each other, warping and re-warping until she couldn't tell exactly what she was looking at.
"Fascinating," She breathed out, soaking up this man's image, trying to peel back his skin to see just what kind of beast would be revealed.
"What is this, Stefan?" The man says, voice ragged.
He's standing just outside Elena's circle, his eyes locked onto Hanne. Elena looks between the two of them, soft dark eyes confused but shining with some that looked a lot like hope. Tear tracks marked their way down her olive-toned cheeks, her chestnut hair sticking to spots that haven't dried. She looked so small in that circle. So fragile.
Hanne doesn't care. Hanne is mad at her too, however childish it may be.
"I'm here as a hostage? I thought you meant to talk to the guy!" Hanne hissed.
This man looks at her with an ache deep as the ocean, one that threatens to pool around her thighs and pull her to the very bottom.
"She's not a doppelgänger if that's what you're thinking," Damon answers for his brother, both of the Salvatore brothers never looking away from Elena's frightened face. "Iona never had children. She's the real deal, Klaus."
Hanne rolls the name along the tip of her tongue, tasting it, trying to recall if she's ever heard it before. It's there in the very back of her mouth and she wants to spit it out but her tongue feels heavy. There's a whirlwind of emotion that comes along with the fragile memory. It pops like a soap bubble before she can even process what it was she was feeling.
The back of her neck throbs from Damon's knockout, the wounds already crusting over with dried blood. Damon resumes his hold, the scent of her blood hitting the cool night air and mingling with the smoke. Hanne absently thinks about how bloody this field would become if her family were here and saw her tied up like a pig.
"Don't you dare speak her name!" Klaus snarled. "This-this is some trick! Some lie! Iona is long gone from me, I saw it with my own eyes, this girl cannot be her!"
Klaus steps into the circle and the fire goes out all at once. Without hesitation, he wretches Elena's neck back and sinks his teeth in. Damon shouts with anger, his grip threatening to shatter her spine. He's torn off of her by a figure dipped in ink, his suit blending into the dark like a shadow. She thinks she shouldn't know this man, that she's never seen him before in her life. But she remembers his fathomless black eyes and a name spills from her lips.
"Elijah?" She whispers, the word coming out warbled.
Stefan pushes her towards Elijah who catches her and holds her steady. The Salvatore brothers flash after Klaus, the orchestrator of this disaster on his knees and howling as his bones snap. His eyes ignite like embers and Hanne watches as his heart breaks as Elijah comes to join in on the fun. She's still not sure who this Elijah is and why she knows him, but she takes the opening the confusion gives her and bolts into the woods.
The forest doesn't blur around her. She'd been taught to be faster than a human, to push her strength into the balls of her feet and run like a track star. But she can't compete with a vampire's speed. A chill races up the back of her neck and she knows someone is giving chase.
Smoke plumes from her skin, a tarry substance spilling from the pores of her forearms and replacing creamy skin with pitch. Hanne pictures herself pulling apart like taffy, like mist, trying to displace her molecules and reform them. The most she can do is phase through a tree she didn't have the agility to evade, a shudder racking through her as exhaustion already begins to take its toll. She runs even as her thighs begin to tremble. Hanne thinks she sees a break in the trees, the headlights of a car, and she could cry from relief.
Elijah chooses then to swoop in and snatches her up. Leaves flutter from the force, his own Lapis Lazuli glimmering in the moonlight like the teeth of a snake as his arms encircle her waist. Hanne screams, thrusting herself from him and landing hard on the ground. The ropes pull at her tender skin, biting into it and leaving her wrists raw and bloody. Her body thrums as it tries to pull apart but Elijah is quicker, plucking her from the ground and flashing through the forest.
They appear next to an SUV, the shock of such an ordinary car as his vehicle of choice at war with the rising vomit. Hanne expels the contents of her stomach, the bile missing Elijah's pristine shoes by a hair. He only shushes her, brushing her thick curling hair from her sweaty face and gathering it for her. Elijah speaks low in a language a hidden part of her reveals to be old Norse.
The crackling of bones and the heavy breathing of a werewolf mid-shift ensnares her. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she searches for the source, for the terrible sound. It's Klaus again, the whites of his eyes an endless black that threaten to swallow her whole. It's only the gold in them that breaks her of her daze, her mouth snapping shut before she realizes it was even open. His spine arches and he breaks from her gaze to clench his eyes tightly against the pain. A vicious, victorious smile spreads across his face despite the torture his body is under.
"Take her to the estate. She doesn't need to see this." Klaus says through gritted teeth.
"And what of your promise?" Elijah's voice is smooth as glass, with something just as fragile hiding beneath it. It sounded a lot like hope.
"All of us will be together again," Klaus wheezes a laugh, blood trailing from the corner of his lips. "And in such a way, too."
He sends her one last lingering look, a promise that they'd meet again in his amber snare. Hanne doesn't want to meet this man again. Doesn't want to look upon his charming grin or his dimples that try to paint a picture of a fairytale and not the demon that so clearly lies under his skin. She can feel the pulsating of life in him, and yet she can feel his death just as clearly as she can feel Elijahs'. Klaus is a man caught in between; neither fully vampire, nor wolf. For all the myths and creatures she's come across, he is the first that's ever surprised her.
"I think not." Hanne's lips tremble, heart-thumping rabbit fast. She won't die for whatever sin her past self committed. She refused.
Her limbs began to plume again, the edges of her curls lifting into the air as if underwater. She reaches inside herself and threatens her body to bend to her will. She vibrates like a hummingbird, heartbeat pounding in time, her frowning lips twisting into a smile as she begins to come undone. Elijahs' arm cleaves through her center, coming through her as if she were a ghost. It takes her entire being to keep her focus, to blink out of existence and wink into it once more.
Despair gripped her.
Her phasing only made it so she stepped a few feet away, and Elijah was on her in a moment, a cloth soaked in what she knows is chloroform pressing against her nose and mouth. In her mind, she damns these two and feels a morbid satisfaction that her parents will be searching for her. That her family will track her to the ends of the earth if she isn't there when he comes to pick her up.
And her family will be very, very angry.
The world around her is an eye aching shade of white when she wakes. Hanne finds herself lying in an unfamiliar bed and dressed in clothes she doesn't recognize. The bed is a four-poster canopy, with dreamy cream drapes cascading down the sides. She watched them for a moment, eyes catching sight of an open balcony. It's still nighttime, and the full moon hangs right insight as if to mock her.
The room she's in is elegantly decorated, minimalistic and something out of a catalog meant only for the rich. It's modern for the most part, though there are glimpses of lives left behind littered about the room that spoke of an old-world touch. It's not to her taste, but it is clearly to Elijahs.
Said man is sitting across from her, poised and refined in a crisp dark suit. The leather chair he's sunk into looks as expensive as the rest of the house, the scent of it faint and new. His eyes are a fathomless black, and his hair is perfectly combed away from his face. He is the kind of man that can pin you in place with a simple look and Hanne knows she should fear him even as the corners of his lips twitch upwards into the smallest of smiles. She momentarily ponders throwing herself from the balcony and chancing the landing instead of dealing with him but pushes the thought away as he spoke.
"Iona." He greets, a deep affection mingling with wariness coloring his tone.
"Hanne. Iona was long ago." Too long ago and yet not long enough ago. Hanne settles against the bed, her hands gripping the luxurious comforter tightly. "Who…?"
"One of the maids." He answers simply.
"Good, good." Hanne mumbles, nodding.
Her wrists ache and she glances at them. They are a molten purple and blue, thin ribbons sliced into them where the rope had pulled taut. The cuts are scabbing over, most of them healed and gone already. Elijah gazes at them for a moment, something like rage flashing in his eyes before disappearing completely. For all that he's feigning a casual air, Elijah is bursting at the seams beneath his facade. Even as impeccably refined as he seems, Elijah is a monster like the rest of them.
"I apologize, I can not seem to wrap my head around this. How exactly are you alive? Iona died nearly a thousand years ago. I was there when Niklaus saw he-your body." Elijah asked. He leaned in, his black eyes revealing themselves to actually be brown. His pupils turned to pinpricks and Hanne could feel a spark of something trying to latch onto her brain and make her spill her secrets. It was all too easy to shrug it off.
"Compulsion doesn't work." She sighed.
"That means you aren't human. Is that how you lived? Then why not come back to us? Why not come home?" His voice had turned rough at the end.
It was the truest sign of emotion she'd seen from him since they'd met. None of the wariness showed through, not of the confusion. Just pure unadulterated heartbreak. Despite it, she knew she was going to dodge that first question for as long as she could. That was a can of worms she did not need to open in front of someone who might want to kill her.
"Because I did die." Hanne plucks at a nonexistent string, the perfection of the comforter giving her nothing to do with her hands. She balled them at her sides and tipped her head back, resting it against the ostentatious headboard. "I've died many times."
"That doesn't explain why you didn't come home," Elijah said, frustrated.
"I didn't come home because I don't know you. I don't remember anything about you, aside from your name. Your friend, Klaus?"
"Brother. He's my younger brother. There were six children in our family when you knew us." His brows pinched together as he corrected her.
"Yeah, well, I don't remember him at all. And I don't think I ever will." Hanne said. "My memory is like...it's like a riverbed full of rocks alright? As time goes on, a river will erode the rocks in it. Eat away at them until they are smooth or totally gone. Some memories are just not going to come back, Elijah."
"I don't believe that." Elijah sat back, his carefully curated mask slipping back into place. "I refuse to believe you'll never remember us. There has to be some way. Some spell, something."
"Well, if you figure it out, give me a call. I think I should head home now, my family is probably growing frantic." Hanne gave him a tight smile and tried slipping out the bed, only to be stopped by large hands.
"Your family is more than welcome to come to visit while we figure this out. For now, I suggest you get back into bed and continue resting." Elijah said soothingly but every word was a command.
He looked at her and Hanne could see the beast that hid behind his polished mask, the one that demanded the world bend to his will or that he'd tear it apart with his own hands. She hadn't forgotten the way Stefan had said Original, had said it incredulously but with an underlining fear that spoke volumes of the power this man had. She held back the burning question of which Original was 'her' Original. It'd only pull her deeper into this mess. Instead, she focused on what she could handle saying.
"I'm already healed. Can't you just let me go? Or am I a prisoner here?" Hanne asked with a scowl.
"Of course you are not a prisoner. You're in your own home." Elijah said slowly. "You're family, Hanne. You are safe here. And you can leave just as soon as Niklaus comes back and we figure out how to restore your memories."
Hanne caught the lie in his words but it was all she could do to cling to any faction of hope she had left. Her family would find her. If anything, they would find her. And Original or not, she knew that there would be hell to pay.
"Sure. Great. So," She tried for casual, "Just how did you find me?"
"Ah. You can blame me for that if you wish. We hardly even uttered your name, lest unleash the hell it would cause. But I'd once been besotted with this young woman and may have shared your name in passing. It seems even after five-hundred years, she'd remembered it." Elijah's tone had cooled, turning to ice chips the more he spoke.
There was a hatred for this girl in his eyes. A kind that was born from hurt, from love. Whoever she was, had fucked him over royally and just had fucked Hanne over.
"What was her name? This girl?" Hanne's head tilted to the side, gaze threatening to lance Elijah where he sat from where she peered up at him from underneath thick lashes.
"Her name is Katerina Petrova. I hear these days she's going by Katherine Pierce." He eyed her, the hint of a fond smile pulling at his lips. "Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no reason. Just was curious is all." Hanne shrugged and gave her best smile.
Curious to see who she'd kill first the second she got out of this hellscape. And oh, how Katerina will suffer.
AN: I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! This story is going to get a lil crazy, but that's pretty much in line with canon, isn't it? I know, I know. Another reincarnation story lol. But hopefully, there are some new things you haven't seen before. I wanted my own twist on it. Let me know your opinions in the comments! Stay safe and healthy babes! Farvel!