Chapter Text
"What?"
Rebekah Mikaelson screamed over the loud noise of wind cutting through the sides of her body, so that the blur that was probably a person could hear.
“Basically, you are about to die.” The shape shimmered as it repeated, as if unaffected in any way by the chaos around it.
“I will rip your throat out—”
“Your psycho brother is chasing you with a bi big white oak stake.” Rebekah kept her senses alert, her mind working to understand whether the image she saw before her was a person, a light, or a complete creation of her own mind. It felt like nothing and everything at the same time.
All the original vampire knew was that she was deep in the middle of some forest in the east (north?) Virginia, after running away from Klaus Mikaelson for what seemed like hours, though it were possibly just minutes.
The plan backfired, the damn doppelganger stabbed her in the back and then handed her over to Klaus along with the knowledge that she had collaborated with Mikael's trap. Klaus, as always and against all odds, overcame their father and later removed the dagger from her back just for the satisfaction of seeing her beg for her life and then kill her anyway.
Adorable.
One thing led to another and now she was hiding in the woods with the absolute knowledge that it was only a matter of time before this cat and mouse game ended. Klaus would win. She could fight and he would still win. Physically and emotionally, he had her in the palm of his hand as he had for a thousand years.
“But” the entity proclaimed with an amused tone, if that could be called it. “I can help you. For a price, of course.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I believe you already know that you will inevitably be killed by your beloved brother. The point is, I can postpone the event if you agree to give me what I want.” The thing/woman spoke as if offering a weary traveler's coveted treasure.
“Great, in addition to fighting Nik, I'm going to have to murder a weird forest witch. What a beautiful day!” As if with perfect timing, Niklaus emerged shouting her name too close for Rebeka’s safety.
Emitting what sounded like a sigh, the witch waved her arm, bathing the forest in a whitish light. The song of the cicadas stopped, taking with it the deafening noise of the wind.
“The death of an Original Vampire creates what the magicfolk call a Nexus Vorti. An almost miraculous event, so rare that it takes supernatural anomalies to occur for it to exist. If properly channeled, it carries more power than any being who has walked this Earth has ever known.”
"I’ve been alive for a thousand years, you think I don't know what a fucking Nexus Vorti is?" Rebekah chooses not to run away as she would like. She doubts that she could, in fact. Everything around her seemed paralyzed. As if the witch's movement had stopped time itself. The witch laughs at the girl as if she were debating a child. Rebekah pretends not to notice the shiver that went down her back.
"Imagine how powerful the Nexus Vorti generated by the death of not only an original vampire, but the first original vampire to ever exist would be. You are the matriarch of your species, the first vampire to be created. I want that power." With her mind working at 1000 km/h, the original tries to think of ways to escape this whole situation, a cold feeling warning her that she wasn't talking to an ordinary witch.
Realizing now, Rebekah noticed that she could barely understand the person's face. “I can help you. I can redraw your brother's mind and all the people involved in your failed trap.” Rebekah's attention is fully taken, her inhuman heart pounding in her chest. "Making everyone think you were blindsided by the doppelganger and never had a part in your brother's assassination attempt."
“You shouldn't know about any of this” the vampire looks for weapons around her that she could use against the stranger.
"But. Only for one year. Unfortunately, I'm not willing to turn against nature. Yet. After that time, everyone will regain their real memory and you will be killed by Klaus."
"Doesn't seem like the best deal on my side of the thing."
"All you need to do is make a pact with me, ensuring that I can channel the power of your death." The woman ignored her, knowing that it is in the Mikaelson nature to latch onto any loophole.
"Even if I believed someone was capable of that" The Mikaelson sister clicks her tongue, always surprised by the audacity of magic wielders. "Why would you need me to sign a contract? Any barely trained witch can channel a great source of power, you don't need my permission to drain my death’s magic" She was so used to gambling with supernatural beings without any ethical strings, Rebekah refuses to be made a fool of by a weird forest witch.
The entity laughs.
"You've been on this Earth for a thousand years and you've never faced things you can't explain?” The woman pierces her finger, from which no blood comes out, only smoke.
"You are bluffing"
The witch moves her other hand and time seems to move again, Klaus smashes through the nearest trees, finally making his way to lock eyes with his sister. A vivid stake in his left hand. A decision to make.
Rebekah lets her heart speak, as she always does.
"I want the chance to know love. Without my brother destroying it."
The vampire pierces her own finger, mixing her fresh blood with the smoke in the witch's hands.
♡
"Have a nice day at your stupid school thing.” That's all Klaus said to his sister the next morning, when she was still trying to get her bearings in reality. "At least try to be helpful and keep an eye on Tyler, he's been an absolute pain in my ass." She remembers jumping when he walked past her muttering, ignoring the mocking tone with which Klaus once again dismissed her wishes for an ordinary life.
A mocking tone and minimal offense. Was that all? It still didn't feel real.
She remembers rubbing her eyes in utter disbelief, feeling her chest to make sure she didn't have a dagger - or worse, a white oak stake - stuck there and she was just having her final hallucination as she turned to ash in her brother's hands.
No, it was all okay.
Nothing in her chest but an uneasy feeling that things weren't right.
For a moment, she thought it was all a dream. And then that she had really died and her afterlife was the frightening torture of having to bear her brother forever even after death. But the more the minutes, hours and days passed, the more she was sure that her encounter with the witch happened and somehow now what everyone thought was that Klaus had killed Mikael, who was brought by Katherine and that the Salvatores and Elena had ambushed Rebekah, thus preventing her from helping her brother.
The only thing that still burned like an ember in her head as if it were a permanent memory, was the look Klaus had on that fateful night, seconds before coming to kill her.
He really was going to kill her.
The sensation was icy. Even now that she could believe all of that to be true, now that she was back at school, quickly climbing into the ranks of the popular girls and seemed to be running everything masterfully, the idea that it would all be over in a year kept looming over her head.
But then again, was it really that bad to have the knowledge of when her life was going to end? Dying was what she always wanted, after all. Granted, she'd be forced to skip steps like becoming human again, getting married, and having kids, but if a year of highschool life and cheerleading was all she could have, she wouldn't be the one to let the chance pass her by. In the back of her mind, there was the possibility of making friends, experiencing romance, going back to being the innocent girl Rebekah refused to accept that had died in the year 1001 AD.
Things could work out.
"At what point did someone commit the utter idiocy of handing you over to your brother?" Stefan Salvatore landed beside her, not as concerned about being seen as he should have been.
Rebekah rolls her eyes, wondering if he really thought he was strong enough to repeatedly provoke an Original or if his lack of humanity simply made him stupid.
"You should be grateful I gave up ripping your Petrova girlfriend's throat out. I decided to return to school with a generous fresh start in mind.” Killing the doppelganger would make her brother hunt her, the Salvatores to taunt her nonstop, and a bunch of the Petrova's annoying teenage friends would try silly failed plans to get back at her. Rebekah decided it would take too much energy to kill them all, and she couldn't go down that route if she wanted peace in the last year of her life. The train of thought made her laugh. Stefan thinks the vampire was particularly trying to piss him off.
"I don't care about what happens to Elena."
"Yeah, no shit." She walks nonchalantly, hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. "You used to be cooler without your humanity, Stefan. Now you just look like a highschool bully who also happens to be an emo."
"I still have the coffins with your family, you know. The four of them. Which is weird, like, since Klaus has six siblings, you're awake, two are dead, which means there should only be three coffins…" Stefan plays with the words, pretending to be thoughtful. Rebekah doesn't let her face show the dizzy feeling that has crept into her head, that has always been there whenever she thought about that fifth coffin. Nobody ever knew what was in that box. She doesn't want to know, not now. Never.
"Ah, who knows? Maybe he keeps the love letters you both exchanged in 1920 there or whatever."
Stefan lunges at the older vampire, using his speed to push her against one of the walls at the back of the school. Rebekah lets out an amused laugh, always happy to engage in the ripper's banter.
(Maybe this was a toxic trait she should work on for her new year, but not for now)
"I'm going to open that fucking coffin and use whatever's inside to rip your entire family's heads off.” He whispers in a menacing tone, hand squeezing the original's throat. Rebekah feels her blood boil, enraptured by the fact that Stefan was completely consumed with rage. Oh, how she knew the guilt would be so much once he turned his humanity back on.
The two are startled by flashes before they can hear an accelerated heartbeat.
Both freeze in shock. There was no way they wouldn’t have heard a human approaching. But there was the girl, a few feet away, holding a phone in portrait mode, still snapping pictures over and over.
"If you don't let go of her and get the hell out of here I'm going to fuck up your life very badly. Trust me, I have pictures and a lot of persuasion skills."
Not wanting to turn his back and risking being bodied by Rebekah, Stefan considers piercing the intruder's head from a distance. He could hear the blood pulsing in her veins and Rebekah could see the veins about to form under the ripper's eyes.
"Who are you?" Stefan asks, curious as to how a human could have surprised them both.
“You want to know my name so you can make me your next bullying victim? Aw, Please leave the new girl alone and go fuck yourself!”
The girl seems to think that Stefan was physically harassing Rebekah and therefore intervened. The original found the situation so unusually amusing that she stopped worrying about not having noticed the human's arrival. Also, it was… Weird. The woman lost precious seconds trying to name the feeling that this whole situation left in her. She was by no means used to being defended, even her siblings were usually too busy with other things and understood that she could fend for herself from whatever came their way, since they were turned into vampires (when it wasn't one of her own siblings with whom she was fighting).
Perhaps it was the fact that the selfless act reminded her of when she was still human and standing up to her father to protect whoever was the target of the man's wrath at the moment, most often Niklaus. A child standing up against a monster much more powerful than her with no idea of the consequences of her reckless actions.
Rebekah is on top of Stefan as he lunges at the girl, one arm wrapping around the young vampire's neck from behind, mirroring Stefan himself, who had his hands around the human's neck.
He was going to kill her. For some reason the original feels an uncontrollable urge to stop him.
She could snap his neck and compel the girl to forget about it all. But also for some reason she didn't want the girl to forget either. It was a risky act, he could be drinking vervain, but if he wasn't, she knew exactly how to get revenge. Grasping his chin, Rebekah forces Stefan to look deep into her turbulent eyes.
"Turn it on. Now." Two words were all it took for the woman to watch Stefan's eyes sink into despair. He tried to resist, squeezing the human tighter as she squirmed, though there was nothing but anger in her eyes. The original grabs both of Stefan's arms with one hand and twists them behind his back, forcing him to let go of the human girl, who falls to the ground.
"I. Said. Turn. It. Back." Pupils dilating, Stefan widens his eyes, too stunned to react. Rebekah could see it all coming back to him, the man's chest heaving. She had never forced any vampires to turn their humanity back, certain that it was never her problem and even more sure it was fun to watch them run around in circles, committing atrocities, losing themselves. It made her feel superior. Somehow.
Stefan staggers, looking around in disbelief. And then he runs away, as seemed to be what he always did when cornered. Rebekah walks over to the girl, watching her prop herself up on her elbows as she coughs.
"Was this all to show me that you don't need anyone to protect you?" The girl massages her temples, she looks disoriented.
"It was to show you that sometimes it's dangerous to get into fights with strangers. Stefan is not the kind of guy you want to have problems with." Rebekah speaks in her sarcastic tone, secretly enjoying the innocence of the girl who had no idea what she'd just gotten out of. She offers her hand to help her up,
"But anyway. The Salvatore brothers are such a pain in the ass."
"RIGHT????" The girl stands and stares at Rebekah as if she's just declared the greatest truth of the century. "Once I was tutoring and I was forced to attend the Early Years Guardians meeting. The older Salvatore brother showed up in charge of Jeremy Gilbert and Jesus Christ, he was an absolute weirdo." Unable to hold back the heartfelt laugh she let out, Rebekah feels her eyes water, it seems this girl was something else, absolutely. She seems to notice that she's said too much and ends up blushing as Rebekah catches her breath.
"I know you just obliterated the guy, which was very cool, actually, but… Are you okay?" The vampire is caught off guard again by the genuine care in the human's tone.
"Yeah, yeah. Like I said, he's just an asshole. You don't have to think about it too much"
"Okay then."
"Hm.""
The girl shifts her weight from one leg to the other, Rebekah notices that the situation is gradually becoming awkward.
"What were you doing here anyway?"
"The Student Council meeting room is closer to this exit than the front gate. And anyway, I'll need to hand out the summons to the students who were selected to organize the autumn ball committee."
"I thought it was the group chosen by Caroline Forbes who always organized the school dances..."
"She doesn't care much about the autumn ball. No one does. It's often used as a punishment for students who don't achieve the desired grades for the semester or who have behavioral problems." The girl rummages through the papers that were apparently kept in her pockets. "You're on the committee. Most of your friend group are, actually."
"Me? Really? Why?" Rebekah snatches the small paper from her hand, reading the summons. "That's impossible, my grades are perfect." Because I am an immortal being with perfected intelligence, she does not add.
"[...] Or who has behavior problems." The human repeats. Rebekah throws the paper at the girl, who dodges with an amused smile on her face.
"See you tomorrow at six o'clock for group torture!" She waves before walking away, leaving Rebekah mildly intrigued.
Perhaps for the girl it was torture, but all the original vampire sees in this situation is the imminent possibility of tormenting some of her enemies.
Her mood is immediately ruined as soon as she hears the notification on her phone. Klaus' n
ame glows on the screen.
'We have four coffins and five problems. Home now.'