An: This is an Originals fanfiction set after Hope has already gone off to school. Klaus and Elijah live. (Aiden too.) It's also Alpha/Beta/Omega verse and contains polyamory by three alphas who will eventually share an omega. The three alphas are Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah. There is NO incest as they are simply sharing the omega, not each other.
Food was a funny thing, thought Vinny. Sometimes it gave her such a sense of home, and others the mere taste of a dish brought instant tears to her eyes with a longing so deep it sucked the air from her lungs. She'd been told before she was what her nonna referred to as an old soul. Her nonna believed this wasn't Vinny's first chance at life and as such had always given her the same respect she gave any adult.It was nonna she thought of as she very carefully enjoyed the fettuccine alfredo she'd been served.
Nonna would be rolling in her grave, probably. While it wasn't anything truly disgusting, her nonna would've asked the cook if he meant to kill her with this kind of canned sauce. Oh well. This is New Orleans. I came here for the mix of French, Spanish, Native American, Creole, and Hatian. Still...why couldn't they hire at least one Italian?
Vinny sighed, pushed her dish back and looked at the notes she'd gathered on the way down to the French Quarter. She'd miss Italy for sure, but the truth was her return home was always sort of iffy these days. She'd been considering staying in Mystic Falls for the rest of her life. During times she wasn't traveling to flesh out her magnum opus on the world history of cuisine. I've had a lot of Spanish foods so far. Time to switch gears and find some French- A shadow fell over her notes and Vinny looked up, an annoyed look filling her facial features. There was a man standing over her, curled dirty-blonde hair and blue eyes probing her. Vinny closed her notebook.
"Can I help you?" His eyes fell on the crest on the front of her leather-bound food journal and the most interesting back and forth happened in his mind. Vinny watched it all in his gaze. She covered the symbol of her founding family with her hands. Vinny's brow wrinkled further when he didn't answer and she tried again in French. "Can I help you?"
This time he replied in perfectly good English, albeit accented. A Brit with these kinds of classic Germanic and Norse features? "I think I know you." He stepped closer and Vinny scooted back in her booth, nervously brushing one dark curl out of her eyes. "Omega." His nostrils flared.
Alarm flooded her veins and Vinny slowly reached for mace that was made especially for alphas currently resting in the bottom of her messenger bag. "No I'm a fucking beta, you dick. Back it up. I'm already here for intensely sad reasons. I will not hesitate to put you down a peg." He just stared, piercing Vinny with those intense blue eyes and she shuddered, a deep quivery breath that brought in a foreign smell. Spice, warmth...little boozy. Is that...blood? Thoroughly freaked out now, Vinny pulled the mace fully from her bag. "Back up, dick nozzle. Last chance. I already lost my nonna this week. I'm on edge without creeps like you."
The door opened and his head turned to look at the sudden jingle. Vinny was moving instantly, swiping her food journal and sliding under the table and out. She went for the back exit where the restrooms where and ducked out onto a side street, sprinting back to the front and making haste onto the main road where there were tons of tourists going about their business. Panting Vinny allowed herself a moment. Since when is my sense of smell that good? Sure I've trained it in my chosen pursuit, but that was almost...animal. Vinny thought again of the odd list of rules her nonna had left her for living in her French Quarter home once she had passed and felt a thrill of danger run through her. The way the man in the bar moved had not been all the predatory grace of an alpha. Something else was there too, and Vinny was beginning to feel that perhaps her nonna's delusions on the supernatural weren't as unreal as they seemed.
x
Klaus Mikaelson glared at his brother, arms crossed in abject anger. "I thought we agreed to leave her alone this time, Niklaus. We only ever seem to get her killed."
"How long have you known our soulmate was back?" Klaus' voice vibrated with barely concealed threat. "Elijah, I'm not playing! An answer, please."
"Almost three weeks now. Rebekah has been following her since Mystic Falls. She stops to eat a lot." Elijah had a faint smile on his face as he considered their soulmate's newest fixation. "She must be mastering in culinary arts again."
Klaus felt a snarl slip from his lips. "Just as she was when you drank her dry, brother." Elijah's face darkened, but Klaus wasn't done. "I'm not giving up on true happiness. Besides, you know it isn't just us. She'll never feel complete without an alpha." He left it unsaid that he meant himself and not Elijah or Rebekah.
"Niklaus, she isn't even aware she's truly an omega." Elijah tried to dissuade his brother once more, despite his boiling anger just below the carefully calm facade he had up. "She's built an entire life on the idea she's a beta. You're going to destroy her world view in order to chase her down once more? For what? She'll only die again. We need to stay back. Partial completeness is better for her than fear and death."
"You and Rebekah might be alright with that, but I never agreed with it." Klaus snarled and went for the door. "She's either a Salvatore or a thief. I've got some phone calls to make. Stay out of my way next time, Elijah."
x
Vinny bee-lined for her nonna's list the second she was safe inside and picked it up.
1. Don't invite any strangers in.
2. If you ever cut yourself, take care of it before going outside.
3. If you have a bad feeling about someone's nature, trust your gut.
4. Don't take the alleys.
5. Drink the tea I left you everyday. Take care of the bush it comes from. It's more important than you know.
6. Stay out of the bayou.
7. Remember that your nonna loves you very much.
Vinny began to tear up, the grief from the funeral catching up to her all over again. God damnit, nonna. I miss you so much. Why'd you have to die before I got back? She went to her nonna's closet and pulled her favorite shawl to her nose, scenting the sweet floral perfume her nonna liked. "Alright. Time to stop feeling sad and start cleaning up nonna's things. She wanted me to make this place my own, so I will."
x
It took another week for her to sort through the things her nonna left behind and decide what stayed and what got donated. As she worked to make the home her own, Vinny found more than a few things that explained nonna's apparent lack of religion. "I swear, I think nonna might have been a witch." Vinny laughed at the idea of her elderly relative riding a broom through the sky. "I found a spellbook she wrote with her own hands, a bunch of crystals and dried shit and some notes about breaking someone's curse? She seems to think someone in our family is cursed pretty heftily."
"What? That's so odd! Can I come look?" Clove's loud voice made Vinny wince. "That's like...right in my major!" Clove was a fifth generation hippy, and proud of it. She had decided to do her own study on the history of wicca and could doubtless benefit from such a find.
"Sure, Clove. I'm about to go on a three day bar crawl sampling local brews and their accompaniments and I'll probably be staying out too late and getting way too drunk to make it home. Come keep my house warm."
"I'll just need one day. I'll get some photo copies. You know I can't sit still long. Bye girl!"
Vinny sighed and looked at herself in the mirror. Since the encouter at the cafe last week, she'd been careful to follow her nonna's rules and so far nothing else had happened to her. The young woman in the mirror looked a little sad, but less tired than she had been. Green eyes stared back from under the ashy-black curls. They were down to her shoulders now, as opposed to closer to her ears. Vinny frowned and then clapped her hands one on each cheek. "Time to get a hair cut and continue my project of love."
x
Elijah kept his eye on Vincent "Vinny" Morselli as she did her bar crawl. She would appear to have finally relaxed from her run in with his careless brother. After Klaus' accusation against Vinny, he'd looked after her even more closely than before. At first, he didn't see it but the longer Elijah looked, the more he became convinced that Vinny could have traced her family tree all the way back to Giuseppe Salvatore. It would seem Mr. Salvatore had a child by someone other than his late wife at some point. Before Stefan killed him anyway. Vinny was descended from that child, for sure. Elijah looked up at the sound of a loud thump to see Vinny had passed out at her table, snoring into her notebook.
It was a particularly sedate bar well off the beaten path so maybe she felt a little safer in the middle of the week when the locals were mostly all working. That didn't mean she was safe, though. Elijah sighed and stood from the corner booth, before snapping on a pair of leather gloves to keep from making skin to skin contact with Vinny and picking her up. He paid her tab, nodded at the vampire running the bar and took her back to the room she'd gotten just down the street. He tucked her into her bed and then removed the gloves that had touched her and threw them away.
He watched her for a moment before gently kissing the top of her head and stepping away silently, locking her door.
x
Vinny wasn't Vinny in her dreams. This was nothing new, though. There were several lives she lived in her sleep. This time, she seemed to be a war nurse. Even with canon fire less than a quarter mile away, she tended to her patients with not a flinch or jolt, zoned in on her task as she flitted from bed to bed, focusing on easing pain. She was one of few young white women who didn't hesitate to treat the colored men fighting for her freedom the same as the paler ones. In fact, she rather preferred them. They were a lot nicer typically, perhaps surprised by her gentle touch and truthful smile. As she passed by one of the sleeping soldiers a hand whipped out and grabbed her arm tugging her hard.
There was creaking, snapping, firey burning pain, and brief bit of deeply intense pressure. Not-Vinny's arm came off with a geyser of scarlet and she gasped, trying to draw in the breath to scream. Shock took her much too fast so she crumpled instead, looking up at the oddly familiar man who cradled her and... Why is he crying? He's the one who killed me. I don't...understand...
Vinny woke with a start, her mouth dry as she hurried to get a glass of icy cold water from the sink. That was the man from the bar. The alpha who was convinced Vinny was an omega. Skin crawling, Vinny slowly became more and more sure he'd always been there in the military nurse dream. It had always been him. Her brain hadn't just filled him in after the fact. No, the man from the bar had always been there. Crying over her spilling life force. "I think I'll cut this pub crawl short. I'd like to be in nonna's bed this time tomorrow." She got back in the hotel bed, but sleep remained escaped from that point on. This left Vinny to stare blankly at a wall in a numb, frantic sort of horror. When daylight came, she hurried home at a near sprint the entire way.
x
Klaus watched the car that had pulled up next to Vinny's house. Given the fact Vinny was currently sampling her way through beer and pretzels under Elijah's annoyingly watchful eyes this was definitely not her. He watched the person that got out of the car and began to fumble with the door lock. They were high on marijuana, a fact he could smell from ten full yards away. His lips curled up and over his teeth in a silent snarl as he began to move, hands going around the strangers mouth and twisting their neck with a sharp snap. "You'll not be killing her, witch. Vinny is going to survive the curse this time."
He took the keys from their pocket and threw their corpse in their own trunk. Then he started the car and began driving for the bayou. Not on my watch.