laissez les bon temps rouler//jackson kenner

2.4

Suddenly the witch Cassie walks in the room. "Oh, my darling daughter."

Finn immediately rises to his feet to greet our mother.

"I've missed you, too," Esther says sarcastically.

Our family dinner continues, about as well as one would expect it to.

"Why don't you say what you came here to say, so this wretched night can end?" Nik remarks.

"It pains me that you, Elijah, and Else look at me with such disdain. I wish you could see that my every action has been to protect you!" Esther shouts.

"You actually believe that, don't you? I knew you were a liar, but now I see you're utterly delusional," I state.

"If you can forget the hatred that you cling to and remember all the times I've mended and healed you," Esther states. Nik laughs sarcastically. She turns to Elijah. "Elijah, do you recall the day Niklaus challenged your father to a duel? Did I leave your brother to die alone? What did I say, when you came to me and asked me to help him?"

Elijah sighs. "That you would rather die than to see any of your children suffer."

Then it hits me. "The necklaces." I glare at my mother.

"It wasn't spelled to protect Else and I. It made us weak," Nik states.

"I sought to protect you both from yourselves! Niklaus if you had killed your father in that duel, or anyone else in the course of your life, you would have activated your curse! Else even from a young age you were prone to violent outbursts, even worse than your brother. I was not going to stand by and wait for the day you went too far!" my mother states.

I slam my hand on the table. "You ruined us! You left us to suffer at the hands of a father who valued only strength!"

Esther looks guilty for a split second. "I kept you from becoming beasts for as long as I possibly could!"

Nik slams his hand to the table before rising to his feet. "Oh, you lied to us! To hide your own transgressions because of your own fear! Our whole life, we sought the approval we were denied by the man we thought was our father! You turned us into the weaklings he hated."

Elijah rises to his feet and paces anxiously. Esther gulps and looks guilty under Nik and I's glare. She won't look either of us in the eye.

I stand up next to Nik. "Look at me! You rant and you rave about the monsters Nik and I have become, but you, Mother you are the author of everything we are."

Esther looks flustered, and suddenly begins gasping for breath. Finn looks mildly alarmed as Esther faints and slumps over in her seat. Elijah manages to catch her before her head hits the table, and he looks at Nik and I in shock.

"She's gone," Elijah states.

I go to rush towards Finn but he uses magic to throw me over the table and into a wall. He does the same with Elijah who lands right next to me.

Nik rushes towards Finn and grabs him by the lapels. "Where is she?"

Finn blows on his fingers and rubs them together, using a muscle-seizing spell on Nik. Nik falls to the floor in pain while Finn adjusts his jacket and looks around frantically.

By the time I recover Finn is nowhere to be found. We try to question Cassie about what just happened.

"Where's our mother?" I ask her.

Cassie is so terrified at this point that she is almost in tears. "Where am I? What's happening?"

Nik loses his temper and grabs Cassie in a choke-hold, and she struggles against his grip as she desperately gasps for breath.