This book is based and inspired by the Originals, with a tinge of the Vampire Diaries. I suggest that you watch the shows to understand some occurrences.
All rights go to The Originals television show on the CW, and Lisa Jane Smith (the author), except the characters and events that are purely of my imagination. PLEASE DO NOT COPY, OR ELSE YOU'LL BE REPORTED.
I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT IF ANYONE IS COPYING SECTIONS FROM THIS BOOK THAT ARE OF MY INVENTION, PLEASE TAKE ACTION.
The song of the chapter is: Alone Again by Alyssa Reid
CHAPTER ELEVEN - THE 'M' STANDS FOR MIKAELSON, NOT MARCEL
THE FIRST SENSE THAT returns to me is hearing; I hear the faint whistle of the breeze, and a wooden creak. But I am still numb — it is a weird kind of numbness, though. I feel as though my body is anchored to the bottom of the ocean. I can still breathe, yet through my closed eyelids, I can sense warmth. Light.
I battle with my mind to move, however, my physical body does not budge. "Help!" I yell. "Wake me up!" In spite of this, no one aids me. Strangely, I am not weak; in fact, I feel quite healthy and strong. I am just submerged in this nothingness.
I can feel my body on something soft — a mattress — yet I am still suspended in this vulnerable ocean.
Abruptly, I hear voices, crystal sharp. "Welcome back, Rebekah. You were out for quite a while." Marcel. I hiss, remembering what happened with Davina and the arse himself. God knows what time it is. Rebekah and I could have been knocked out for an entire day.
"Where am I?" A female voice asks. That had to be Rebekah. "How did I get here?"
"You upset Davina. I'm glad you two got to meet. Now you know what you're dealing with." I feel strong shivers running up my vertebrae. The way Marcel said those words . . . it was as though Davina was the witch's version of an Original.
"Is this my old room?" I swear I feel like punching her. Out of all the information she could have asked about, she queried Marcel on her bloody room. She could have dug for information to get out of here, wherever the hell 'here' was. Who knows, maybe Marcel was planning to use us as leverage. Sure, Nik would get his sister back, eventually, but most probably he would not bother about me. After all, I did hit him there.
Okay, calm down. I intoned inside myself. Don't get paranoid or else you won't be able to think rationally.
"Well, it's mine now. Just like this town is mine, Davina is mine and Elijah's mine, until I feel like giving him back. What was once yours, what was once your brother's, it's now mine." If this situation was much more light, I would have laughed at his brat-like rant. However, I was in no position to do anything. I was a sitting duck. Or vampire.
I faintly hear some footsteps, until they abruptly stop. "Oh, and, tell your friend here to never touch Cami again, or she'll suffer the consequences."
I involuntarily gulp when the door shuts with a thundering snap.
I feel the mattress moving and some hairs faintly tickling my face. "Melissa?" Rebekah breathed. "Get up, we need to get out of here now."
I clench my fists, pinching my sides until I imagine a big blue bruise, but no matter what kind of pain I place myself in, I cannot get out of this sea. I cannot even open my eyes. It made me feel so damn defenseless, so exposed. And I needed to awaken fast, because Rebekah was never really patient, even when she was human, so she could just leave me here to rot.
And I never told her who I was.
Suddenly, I feel cold liquid being gushed on my face. It was like someone was cracking an egg on my head, its liquids pouring down my neck. And it was cold as ice. In my underwater cage, I writhed and flailed. "Shit!"
Out of the blue, a soft voice spoke. "Do not anger Davina again. Try not to cross paths with her — she could be your demise." Once those chilling words are spoken, light fills my pupils and I gasp, covering my face, hyperventilating loudly.
"Melissa? Melissa?" I feel soft hands on my shoulders, steadying me. "What's going on?" Rebekah face fills up my vision. "I — I — that voice, did you hear that voice?" I half yelled, half stuttered.
"Voice? What voice? I did not hear anything." Rebekah's voice now held a lot of worry. "I —" I look around, taking in the detail of the room. "It said — it said that she was dangerous."
"Who's dangerous?"
"Davina."
Rebekah tutted. "Well, we all know that. She was stronger than me!" Her voice rose in crescendo. "She was more powerful than me!" Now I was the one calming her down. "Yeah, I know, I witnessed it first hand."
"She knocked you out pretty bad, you were out like a light."
"I know. Do you think — do you think — " I am worried that if I say it out loud that it will make it even more true. " — that she's an Original?"
"An Original?" Rebekah laughs. "I think I would know if I had a sister."
"No, I don't mean a vampire one." I try to rephrase my question. "I mean, do you think she's the Original equivalent to a witch?"
Rebekah's face changes dramatically. "That's a very dark thought." She jumps out of the bed and holds out a hand. I look up to it, tears welling in my eyes at the sign of friendship. "Come one, we need to go tell Nik, before Marcel or that bitch comes back."
"Take my hand, I don't bite. Usually." She grins. I grip her hand and pull myself off the mattress and stumble a few times as I get used to the sudden change of height and weight. I sigh heavily and I croak: "I need blood."
Rebekah looks at me. "We'll hunt after we tell Nik, okay? It's essential that we inform him as soon as possible or else he'll throw a fit."
"And this time he can't dagger you." I grin. Rebekah's face brightens at my words. "At least I can wake up to that juicy detail every morning." She walks out of the door, and I hesitate. "You coming?" She asks, peering back in.
I bite my lip. "Well . . . don't you think its safer to just zoom out of the window?" I point at the glass pane on the other side of the bed. "We can, but if Marcel did not leave us with his guards that means that he doesn't care if we get out either way. We might as well walk out in style."
I smirk. "I'm starting to like you." I state.
We descend the stair case and go out into the sunlight. "Who doesn't?" She answers back cockily. I pretend to think. "Hmm . . . maybe Marcel? Or your dad?"
"Fair point. But my father's dead, so it doesn't matter."
I stop dead in my tracks. No pun intended, since I am, after all, technically dead. "Your father's dead?"
"Yeah." Rebekah confirms nonchalantly. "Nik killed him." I raise my eyebrows high. "And you forgave him?" I ask, my voice coated in shock. "Mmhmm. Good riddance to bad rubbish. It's a very long story that involves the Salvatore brothers and Katherine Pierce's doppelgänger."
I frown and resume walking. "I thought the line ended with Katherine." Now it was Rebekah who stops. "You know Katherine?"
I sigh, and decide to tell the truth for once. "Yes. We were best friends, until I discovered that Klaus was hunting for her blood. Once I realised that if Klaus found me he would kill me to get to Katherine, I ran away. I never heard of her again. She never told me that she had a child." I laugh bitterly. "Turns out she never really did trust me." Then it was a good thing that I never told her my deepest secret.
"Katherine's a whore. She was exactly like Tatia, and she played with the Salvatore brother's feelings. Two timed them without them knowing. Elena, Katherine's doppelgänger is the same."
"The Petrova's are messed up." I state. The side of Rebekah's mouth curves up into a smile. "You could say that. But we Originals are more so."
"True." I agreed. "You forgave your brother for killing your own father."
"That's because you don't know the whole story." She replied. You don't know mine.
We started to speed to Mikaelson Manor, but we went slightly slower than usual, thanks to my suspiscious weakness. Still hyped up by being — kidnapped? Held hostage? Knocked out? — my vampire senses were in full flow, even though I knew it would consume energy faster.
So that is how I eavesdropped on Nik's and Hayley's converstaion.
"What stopped you?" Nik's deep voice asked. "You could have been free from all of this. Of me."
"Yeah, well, when I was fighting off those vampires, I realised that I wasn't just fighting for myself." Hayley paused, trying to explain her point. "Maybe it's got to do with the fact that my birth parents gave me up and my adoptive parents kicked me out. All I realised that when push came to shove, I wouldn't let anyone hurt it." I swallowed. Funny how human lives can be so similar to one another yet, you feel so alone.
"I'm beginning to think that we are a lot alike." I cannot help it, but I feel a spark of jealousy and my body feels like it is sizzling. Nik is so bipolar. One second he hates Hayley, the next he's having a heart to heart conversation with her.
I guess that I could just tell him everything, but Nik was an Original, and the most hot tempered one of them all. He would not just forgive. He might care for me still, yes, but the betrayal would burn brighter and hotter than any kind of relief that I was, in fact, alive. What would he think of me, when I myself, no matter how righteous my reasons were in the first place, felt repulsed at my decision? I guess when I was turned into a vampire, and was told that eternity was one of the thing I would have to live with, I never really expected it to be so . . . lonely. So loveless and frigid.
"You and I are both cast-offs, who've learnt to fight when backed into a corner. " Nik states.
"Well, we're backed into a corner now."
"Ah, that we are. It's time to fight, little wolf."
"This whole thing with Marcel; the deal with the witches, trying to take him down, trying to take what's his . . . Rebekah told me that once you loved each other like family. What happened?" I think I might be rubbing off on Hayley. Finally, she is making herself useful. Hmmm, I think. I should talk to her about that.
Initially, I think that Nik would deflect the question, because the Nik I've heard of these days does not show vulnerability. He surprises me, however. "I made Marcel everything that he is. Treated him like as son. And when my father chased my siblings and I out of New Orleans a hundred years ago, we thought him dead. We each mourned him in our separate ways. Yet when I returned, I found not only had he survived, he had . . . thrived. Instead of seeking us out, instead of sticking together, as one, he made a choice to take everything my family had built and make it his own.
Now he is living in our home, he's sleeping in our beds . . . that 'M' he stamps everywhere. It's not for Marcel, it's for Mikaelson. I want it all back. And if I have to push him out to get it, then that's exactly what I'll do."
I hear heavy footsteps walking, possibly out Hayley's door. "I'll have someone see to the air conditioning."
We stagger in the door, closing it with a thump. I wheeze; the vampire exercise wasn't good for me, especially when I was in dire need of blood. I feel as though flames licking my chest, and my heart is forcing its way out of my rib cage. Sweat coats my body like a second-skin. I'm about to collapse any moment. I double in half and place my hands on my knees, attempting to support myself. I think that I'm starting to see black dots in my vision. Oh God.
Rebekah's shrill voice throws me out of my semi-stupor. I look up, and see that not only has Nik descended the elegant staircase. but that he's also looking at me in worry. I meet his eye, and I know that if I were human, I'd be blushing madly.
Once that embarrassing thought has flooded my mind, guilt fills me up, right to my extremities. Could there have been any other way of protecting Hayley instead of hitting him where the sun doesn't shine?
Oh God. Please, spare me the embarrassment before I go up in imaginary flames.
"You're right." Rebekah agrees. Nik tears his gaze away from me and gives her a confused look. "The girl, Cami, she's the key." Rebekah elaborates. "Marcel like her, and because of that, we got to see the secret weapon of his that you've been going on about."
If me practically dropping to the floor didn't spike his interest, this piece of information definitely did. "Well, don't stand unceremonied. What is it?" He demands.
I stand up and hobble over to them, leaning my trembling body on the cool surface of the walls. "It's not a what, Mikaelson. It's a who." I semi-grimace and semi-grin simultaneously. I elaborate on my intel "It's a girl. Davina. She can't be more than sixteen and . . . " I gulp, remembering the wave of power that I felt from standing in her presence. I remember that sea of vulnerability. I remember the voice. Involuntarily, I shudder.
This exertion of energy nearly sends me tumbling on the floor and I dig my nails into the wall, trying to keep myself standing up and not making myself a pathetic fool in front of the Original siblings. " . . . I've never felt that kind of power in all my nearly thousand years on this planet. In fact, she even send Rebekah tumbling out the window." I look at her, a thought hitting my delusional brain. "Good thing you weren't wearing a skirt."
Nik cocks his head to the side, looking at me curiously, perturbed that this girl put down Rebekah, one of the most powerful beings on Earth. "A witch." He whispers. I can almost see the clockworks in his brain rolling, trying to click pieces together. "She's not just any witch." Rebekah and I speak at the same time. We spare each other a glance and Rebekah steamrollers ahead. "She's something I've never seen before. Something beyond powerful, and now because of you, she has our brother."
A glint of what looks like guilt flashes in his blue eyes, but as quickly as I see it, it vanishes again. "Who knows what she could do to him." Rebekah finishes, an ambivalent expression on her face.
Nik takes a deep breath and puts his hands on his hips momentarily. "Where is she?"
I think the same realisation hits us at the same time, and we look at each other, praying that what we were thinking was wrong. A strange feeling hits my gut, a feeling that I've not felt in decades.
Fear.
And it makes me feel horrible, like a venomous liquid rising up from my stomach; it makes me feel so weak, that someone as strong and fast as I could be taken by some angsty-infested teenage girl.
"That clever little bitch." We seem to intone at the same time.
Rebekah's mouth forms little gymnastics, as though she doesn't know what or how to phrase her next few words, which would like an admission of defeat. Nik frowns and stares at both of us. "What's wrong?"
Since Rebekah is still amidst her pool of stupor, I take the first step. "We don't know." I admit, somewhat shame-facedly. "She wiped our memories of the location." I trail of into a whisper. This just raised the stakes.
This time, Nik was definitely worried. I could see it in his Arctic pools. Suddenly, Rebekah drags her fingers through her hair and shrieks. "Marcel possesses a weapon bigger and more powerful than an Original, and you handed our brother to him!"
Nik grits his teeth, clearly hating to be reprimanded. "How many times will Elijah forgive you, how long until his hope for your redemption finally dies?"
"I did what I had to do!" He yells after her retreating back. "Marcel took our home!" Rebekah whips around, her blonde hair swinging, her eyes sparkling with rage. "And our home is worthless without family!"
This shuts him up and he blinks a few times, his fist clenching and unclenching. Rebekah walks right up to Nik's face and speaks extremely softly, so softly that I have to activate my vampire hearing.
"I am finding Elijah. Whatever it takes. Are you going to help me?"
Nik smothers the uncertainty in his eyes, and they are now filled with fiery determination.
Mikaelson fire.
"Whatever it takes," he whispers.
Rebekah nods, satisfied. But before she can say anything else, I fall to the floor with a thump, and the siblings whip around to face me. I feel so weak; I can literally sense all my energy being filtered out. And funnily enough, it hurts so much that I feel as though my insides are on fire.
"What's the matter with her?" Nik asks. "I've no idea. Davina knocked me out, but I don't know what kind of spell she put on Melissa." Rebekah explains worriedly. She walks over to me and kneels down. She lifts my chin and inspects my eyes, turning my head every once in a while. "She's going to collapse any moment. She needs blood. God knows what that witch did to her."
This time, she addresses me directly. "Wait here. I'll go get a human." With that, she zooms off, right before I can attempt to sarcastically reply "where else can I go?"
She leaves me and Nik in the room, and he is about to leave it when I croak, "wait." I shift myself painfully and look him in the eye. "I'm so sorry about earlier; when I hit you. But you were hurting my family."
Nik looks down at me, but says nothing. His face is expressionless, and it scares me; I don't know what he's thinking. Taking the risk, I croak on. It appears that a desert has taken refuge in my mouth and throat, and I cannot seem to produce saliva, to speak. I feel as though my pipes are made out of glass, and they are fragmented, shattered with web-like patterns.
"Remeber when we were are the bar with Marcel? We were talking about our lives as a human." I take a deep, rattling breath, trying to get energy, and I move on. "When I was human . . ." I hesitate, feeling nervous about revealing things about myself. "Family was sacred to me. As a vampire, I lost numerous human attributes and values, but I never lost the family element."
I gaze into his eyes, and feel my breath catch. "Family is still sacred to me. Hayley is my family. And I know for a fact that its sacredness is for you too. So I hope that you can understand why I hit you."
We are talking about Hayley, but somehow, I feel — I know — that this is something much deeper. I can taste it in the air. We are connecting.
"I will support you and help as much as I can in your quest because Hayley is carrying a tiny little baby in her womb that needs to be protected. But if someone crosses the line, I will cross mine as well."
I feel a rush of warm air breeze through the room, and I feel a . . . connection. Like someone has tied one end of the rope around both of us, and no matter how long the distance of rope is between us, we'll always be connected.
Somehow, I know that Nik senses the connection as well. And that doesn't make me nervous, or make an orb of hope float up inside of me me; no, it makes me feel at peace, like I know that nothing can make the rope sever.
Not even a thousand years.
Nik nods at me and starts to walk away from the room. He doesn't say anything; he doesn't need to, because we've come to a profound, unfathomable, multi-faceted, arcane understanding, that no one else will know. It's a bottomless cavern, that will take years, decades, maybe even centuries to explore. But we are going to get there someday. I know it.
"Hey." I stop him. He doesn't turn around, but I know that he is listening. "That 'M' that Marcel stamps everywhere?" I smile softly. "It stands for Mikaelson, not Marcel."
He still doesn't turn around, but I know that he too is smiling.
So, there's the much awaited eleventh chapter of 'The Originals'. Did you enjoy the ending with Melissa and Klaus? I tried very hard to make it an emotional scene. As an author, I felt it, because the characters mean a lot to me. But as a reader, how was it?
I know this is too much to ask, but do you think that you can write in the comments what you liked about the chapter? Not only this one, but also the future ones. Also, I'd really appreciate it you awesomesauce readers can (please) get the story higher on the charts. It would mean the world to me, and I would be forever be grateful to you.
I know a lot of you guys are asking for me to update faster. But remember, I do have other stuff to do in the real world, like, I don't know, exams (which BTW, I'm neglecting at the moment because I wanted to update the story. My mom's getting so mad... I have Science, English and History tomorrow. Wish me luck!).
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