The Last Petrova

Hallucinations

 "What are we doing out here, mother?" I ask, my hands gripping the edge of the castle's tower. Instead of answering right away, she takes my hand in hers and guides me over towards the opposite side of the tower, so that we now face the east.

"In a short time, the sun will soon rise," my mother says, lifting up my dark hair and setting it down neatly behind my shoulders, "And you will be fourteen. A new chapter of your life will begin."

I nod slowly. "The Duke is to come tomorrow. My future husband?" I ask, turning towards her. "Yes... But that isn't quite what I meant, my darling," she answers, cupping my face with the palm of your hand.

"With this marriage, you will rise to the ranks of Queen. You will be the ruler of your own land. And when you are, you must take the measures necessary to make the people see you not as a princess, but as a leader," she says.

I frown. "What does that mean, mother?" I ask.

She doesn't answer.

"Mother?" I repeat, staring at her emotionless eyes, which are staring off into the distance. I tilt my head and touch her cheek, only to recoil as I find it as cold as...

"A lifeless corpse," a voice calls. A voice I haven't heard in so long, yet one that I am familiar with all the same, for her screams haunted my dreams for years even after her death.

"Beatrice?" I whisper. And suddenly I am not fourteen anymore. Three years have swept by, and all that's left of my mother are her ashes which stand in a pile next to my feet.

"Hello, Helena," Beatrice says in a chilling voice. Blood spews from her wounds, and in the place of where her heart should be, a gaping hole exists. "They were the end of me," Beatrice says, glancing down at her chest, "And they will be end of you."

She begins to circle me. I never even shared a single conversation with her, yet the witch who betrayed the Mikaelsons in vengeance for her dead family left a heavy impression on me.

"They will use you. They will squeeze every bit of worth out of you, then they will beat you to the ground and leave you to die," she hisses into my ear.

"Who will?" I shout, yet my voice comes out barely audible.

"They will," Beatrice says, raising a shaky finger towards the edge of the tower, as four figures climb over the wall and land in front of me. I glance over at Beatrice, but she is only a pile of bones now.

"They will use you," Beatrice's voice echoes throughout the castle. The first of the four figures, Kol, kicks me to the ground. "They will squeeze every bit of worth out of you," I hear, as Rebekah grabs me by my shoulders and throws me to Elijah, "Then they will beat you to the ground," her voice says as Elijah strokes my hair in a caring way. Then I scream as he throws me off the tower.

I continue to scream until I am caught by someone. I scramble away from Klaus's arms as he opens his mouth wide, revealing his fangs. "And leave you to die..." Beatrice says, as Klaus tears open my throat.

I gasp, and wake up in New Orleans. I'm in a mansion. My eyes travel up towards the elegant chandelier hanging off the ceiling.

I'm in the mansion.

"They changed you," my own voice says, as I see the scene from 1721 unfold before me. I'm on the ground, crying as Elijah holds me in his arms. Dozens of corpses lay dead around me, including the smoldering hunk of flesh belonging to the woman I burned. The scene changes once more, and this time, it's one hundred years later, in the very same mansion.

"Helena, enough!" I hear Klaus roar.

I'm smashing open every single window I can find, throwing every piece of furniture across the room.

"No! No, this is not enough. I will not stop until every single one of those cursed witches are dead!" I shout, turning towards Celeste and chopping her head off-

I shake my head. No, that never happened. It literally never happened. This memory- this memory isn't real. The werewolf toxins... This is a hallucination. This never happened.

But before I can think more on that, I'm in Chicago, I'm in Stefan's apartment, and we're kissing with a fiery sense of passion. I can smell the blood smeared all over his lips, and I lick it all off. Thirty humans lay dead around us, but what does that matter? I rip his coat off and throw him onto the bed. He pulls me down by the hand, but abruptly stops when the tip of a stake erupts through his stomach. I look up, and see Elijah.

Elijah. New York. He is jamming a stake into my gut and is turning it around and around. I blink, and the run has risen, my daylight ring lies in a corner somewhere and I scream as Elijah's stupid witch rips open the curtains, revealing me to direct sunlight.

'This isn't real,' I tell myself. 'This isn't real.'

I watch out of the corner of my eye as Klaus chops both Elijah's and the witch's heads off. He takes my unconscious body in his arms and vamp-races away.

'Please, let's not pretend like you have time to think about anything other than yourself,' Katherine Pierce's voice says.

1610. I see all of August's French soldiers lying dead on the ground.

'If you've survived this long with Klaus right beside you, it means you knew how to play all the right cards.'

1926. Rebekah's casket. Marie hugging me goodbye. Elijah staring at me after having severed Klaus's head from his shoulders.

'You're mind is constantly at work trying to manipulate people so that they can better serve you.'

The corpses of the hundreds upon thousands of people whose lives have ended because of me. I'm just as bad as them. No- I am one of them. One of the Mikaelsons.

"They will be the end of you," Beatrice, along with Katherine, whisper into my ears.

But they're wrong.

I will be the end of me.