The song attached is Dark Doo Wop by MSMR and the gif is Camille and Elijah playing that trivia game.
A woman steps out of her cab, which idled on the curb. Her sharp jawline. Her bold eyelashes and perfectly shaped eyebrows contrasting with her fair skin. There was no doubt her eldest child was her's- she looked like the older version of her daughter. For an older woman, her skin was perfectly smooth. Well-kept. Her hair was like silk.
It fell down to her back when it was down. When it was up, like now, short strand in the front framed her face. Curled inwards to make her have a pure, innocent face. The rest was fastened in an ornate braid, pinned together on the crown of her head. She was just as curvy and beautiful as her daughter. Her fur-lined coat hung down to her knees, but her clothes underneath undeniably showed the lithe shape of her figure.
She clicked her tongue as she sent a glance at the cab, which stayed by the curb. The cabbie inside having been dead, she figured it wasn't going anywhere for awhile. The lady carried herself like royalty. With empowering confidence and power that even made lawyers look up in awe. Others on the street almost didn't notice her existence.
They flitted around with happy smiles and drinks in hand. Tourists, the majority of them. The city of jazz was true to its name. Music drifted from every small show on the street, both sides. People in the street preached, sang, played, painted. The culture was rich, but the Lady didn't seem interested.
She wasted no time. Her feet carried her through the brightly lit street. The lady was no stranger to New Orleans. She'd arrived early this morning, actually. Spent the day with the daughter who seemed to be a carbon copy of herself. It was a happy reunion, despite the declaration of betrayal and lies mixed in. In a fluid motion she scaled the stairs of the apartment building, knocking on the door.
A moment later it opens, revealing a presumably young black woman who's face twisted into fear when she recognized the lady. "Mary... Mary Elizabeth Casket." She stutters out. The lady, Mary, forces her way into the apartment. The pretty, stunning girl with short hair and a business dress didn't bother trying to stop the lady. She only backed up until her legs hit the sofa.
"Queen, if you would be so kind." The Lady's voice was cold as ice, though her question was even and mild. Suddenly her hand snakes out and grabs the girl. "Where's that thing who calls herself royalty, Cecilia?" She asks. Cecilia says nothing, only grasps the Woman's hands feebly as she's lifted off the ground as though she was trash.
"Fine." The lady says after a moment. "Remain loyal to the bastard of a stupid king, what do I care?" Queen Mary scoffs. "You can help me send a message."
"Go to hell." Cecilia chokes out. The lady only smiles, a slow sadistic smile.
---
Penelope was livid. "You killed her." She whispers, death in her eyes. She spoke and glared at me like something from an action movie.
"No. Whinnie the Poo killed her. I just witnessed it happen. After a millennium the details blur together, so don't blame your mother's foggy memory." I reply, completely free of emotion, though inside I was pleased with myself. My smirk dissolves as my older half-sister kicked down the dining table. The wooden legs coming off the top area. I put my hands on my hips. "You're going to have to compel us another table, you know?"
Behind me Sebastian groans at my antagonistic words. Penelope grabs the wooden leg, breaking it over her knee. I step forward towards her, right as she rushes at me. Fighting angry. Something that clouds many people's heads. Including her. I duck as the stake in her hand sails past my head, nipping my ear. I clench my jaw.
"You could've taken my ear off." I growl, bringing my knee upwards into her chest. Penelope grabs my neck from beneath me, flipping me hard onto my back, driving the wind from my lungs.
"Maybe if I had, you wouldn't be able to hear the bullshit spewing from your mouth." The whites of her eyes were red. The dark slithering veins beneath them giving her the steely vampire look. It was strange on her. I didn't see if often on my sister. She acted so much more sophisticated and entitled.
I swing my torso to the right, just as the wooden stake from that table is driven into the floorboards. "You're racking up some real repairs. What are we going to tell the landlord?" I ask, hooking her cheek hard with my right knuckles. Enough force to push her off me. I stand up, and she does as well. "Are you done?"
Penelope doesn't answer, but grabs the other piece of the table leg. She grabs my shoulder harshly, and I clasp her arm, my nails digging in as her fingers dig into my collar bone indention. I gasp at the pain there, and she raising her other hand up with the stake. Blood swells from beneath my nails, and I use all my strength to spin her off me, throwing her hard against the marble top of the kitchen.
I am on top of her before she does anything else. Pinning her down and prying the stake out of her hands. She hisses up at me with a menancing gleam in her dark eyes. "You've been lying to all of us. You killed our mother out of greed for power and spite." Penelope was enraged. It was clear enough. "You disgust me."
I spare a glance at Francis, his face one of terror as his dark blue eyes look from me to her. In that moment my older sister gets the upper hand, she pushes me away, then grabs both my shoulders and flings me so hard I fly until I hit the TV. Then the wall. The flat screen cracks and shatters, the back toppling off the wall and onto the hard wood floors as I do. Glass shatters around me as I fall. My knees of my black jeans split open, my skin underneath being sliced with sharp clear splinters of glass.
The wall behind me had caved in, a hole opening up as dry wall fell loose. My spine ached and I knew it had broken somewhere with the impact. When I snapped it into place I'd heal, but for now, I had bigger matters to attend to. 'The ability to endure pain is the warrior's true weapon.' His voice rings in my head like a ghost.
Mikael.
I take a breath, hearing Penelope's footsteps towards me, and before she realized I was moving, I did. I stood up, so fast another disk in my back must've fractured, and snap her neck, breathing hard. I carefully twist until my spine is straight again, feeling it heal.
I pull the red curls from my face and put it all up in a messy bun, small pieces in the front refusing to stay. My eyes lock onto Francis, who had gone still. He had walked forward when the glass flew, so there was a cut on his high cheek bone. But he didn't move to wipe the blood off. He only looked at me with a stone cold silence that made me take a step back.
"Francis..." I begin.
"You killed my mother." He shakes his head, not meeting my eyes. I walk forward to console him, but Francis turns from me. I swallow thickly, looking at Bastian. He'd already known that I had killed Mary. He got over it centuries ago.
"France please.." I take another step and he turns around with rage in his eyes.
"My mother, Merida!" He spit my name from his mouth like it tasted like poison. Guilt surfaces but I swallow it. I do not feel guilt.
The doorbell rings and Bastian moves to open it. I grab his arm. "If they're important, they'll let themselves in." A warning was in my tone. That could be Mary. Come with stake in hand. After a few seconds of silence the door is kicked open.
On any other occasion I'd roll my eyes as NiKlaus enters but now I only drop Bastian's arm and look away, looking at the blood on my fingers from the glass. Rebekah grabs my head and makes me look at her, then looks down at Penelope. "My God."
"She's not dead." I mutter. "Yet." I add as an afterthought.
"You kill my sister, and you'll never see me again." Francis hisses. I stiffen, he didn't even look at me. He said 'my' sister. As if she wasn't mine too. It was worse than anything Penelope had done to me.
"What the bloody hell happened?" Kol asks, looking back and forth between the three conscious Caskets. "We thought someone was dying."
"Come on." NiKlaus grabs my shoulder. I could feel my eyes stinging. Tears threatening me. I look up into his eyes, seeming dark in the shadowed room, though in the sun they were a pretty sky blue. "There's a protection spell on the compound. You'll be safe there."
I go to pick up my sister but Bastian stops me and does it himself. No one bothered us as we left the building.
When we enter the compound, Rebekah goes to work on helping pull the fragments of glass from my fingers. I grimace as she does. "NiKlaus told me what happened. That Mary is a vampire." She says in a quiet voice. Of course, it didn't make a difference as the only people who lived here had supernatural hearing.
"I'm sure Francis will forgive you. In time." Kol says, coming over to stand by me. I sat on the tall table, watching Rebekah take extra care on my hands. The wounds healed as she pulled the glass out.
"I wouldn't be so sure." I answer nonchalantly, tired. "Always and Forever doesn't apply to us, as much as we wished it did." I glance over at Francis, then meet Kol's eyes. Like an unspoken agreement replies to me.
"I'll watch him." Kol leaves off towards Francis, who was fiercely arguing with Bastian. I knew I could eavesdrop if I wanted, but I knew what I'd hear. He was angry that Bastian and I didn't tell him. He felt singled out. It was something he had never felt from me before. I'd always been his sister and even before I grew close to Bastian, it was always us against the world.
"Freya thinks it's best if Penelope is confined to one room for now. She's made a boundary spell." Rebekah tells me, then turns my arm over gently. "Have there been any side effects of the Mark?" She asks. I pull my arm back, turning it so the upraised red scar was hidden. I feel my shirt, realizing that I had pulled on Alba's tee shirt last night and hadn't taken it off. An unexpected lump forms in my throat. My hair was a mess. My face was clean of makeup. Sure, my nails were perfect, but my black jeans were shredded from the glass and the shoes I had hastily slipped into at the door had no socks on underneath.
I relinquish the overwhelming urge to scream and hide from everyone until I could fix my appearance. Instead, I answer Rebekah's question. "Not that I can tell." My fingers touch my throat and neck, not really cure where Kol had said the star was.
NiKlaus walks over, interrupting us. "Just to be sure you won't tap into your deep dark inner demons under the same roof as my daughter, I've arranged a visit for you, Merida." And at that exact moment Camille walks into the compound, bright-faced until her eyes land on the scowl upon Francis's mouth and the tension in the room.
"Great." I smile sarcastically up at NiKlaus. "It seems I'm scheduled for a lobotomy." My words only made the sadistic hybrid grin wider. I knew it wasn't the time for jokes. Mary was out there, God knows where, and had already begun her reign of terror- again. I never thought I'd see the day where I could compare Scotland to New Orleans but here I am.
"What's going on?" Camille asks as she walks up to us. I grab the damp towel from Rebekah, wiping the last bit of blood from my hands and face, then stand up.
"Nik thinks I'm going to be tempted by my deepest darkest desires and impulses, and the only way he thought to amend that was to call his therapist. As if she can undo a thousand years worth of guilt and backstabbing betrayal from little ol me." I swing my arms around, raising my voice. Cami studies me carefully.
"I'll warn you," NiKlaus looks at me but leans towards the French Bartender. "She bites." I flash him a narrow look.
My gaze drifts to where Kol and Francis had been but they weren't there any longer. Instead Sebastian and Elijah was talking in a formal and businesslike manner. I wanted to roll my eyes.
I could still smell Alba on the shirt I wore. Cologne and grass. Not old pounded grass. Freshly cut spring grass. Alba would be a healthy distraction right about now. I bite my lip, then scratched my cheek.
---
"You always seem to have something to say when you walk into my bar. Why not now?" Cami asks, crossing her legs on the sofa. I sat across from her. On another sofa. My head between my hands. I look up, my piercing bright eyes meeting her gaze. Where mine was impatient and annoyed, hers was calm and pulsed with a happy energy.
"Because it was on my terms." I growl. She entwines her fingers together, tilting her head at me.
"Narcissist, situationally obsessive compulsive, and you're a control freak." Cami says, obvious she was joking but at the same time her face was straight. I only narrowed my eyes.
"I'm not a doctor or anything but I'm pretty sure most counselors aren't supposed to use the F word during an appointment." I rose my eyebrows.
"Well usually my appointments aren't with vampires." Camille answers simply. I stand up, pacing along the length of the couch.
"Freya trapped me in this room. The rest of you can come and go as you please but I'm here until she decides I can leave." I groan. "I know it's because she doesn't want me running into Penelope, who's also in a similar predicament. But honestly? What did I do to deserve this?" I look around the room, admiring the books along the far wall. It was some sort of reading study room. There were even some board games.
"You did kill your sister." Cami pointed out calmly, seemingly unfased by me.
"Yes well, that's temporary." I retort, crossing my arms.
"You seem indifferent on the topic of Penelope." The bartender comments. I sit back down on the couch, throwing one hand along the back of it.
"We never got on that well." I reply casually. "I was always her bastard sister to annexed her throne." A smirk plays on my lips. "That's why Mary hated me. I made her and her children look bad in the eyes of all of Scotland." I lean back my head on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. "Then I proceeded to win with war with the English, overthrow their Queen."
"But that was a long time ago." Cami says. I look at her, and scratch my chin.
"Well, I did kill Scotland's Queen before me. My sibling's mother." I shrug. "She hated me. I hated her. It came down to a choice. If I didn't kill her first, then she'd kill me." I pause momentarily. "She almost did." My next words were quiet.
"Sebastian isn't mad at you." Camille comments, but there was a question there.
"He found out a long time ago. We were in Europe. France, I think." I tell her. "When Mary caught up to us. Burned our home to the ground." I sigh heavily. "That's the closest she'd gotten until now."
"Sounds like our father." Elijah comes into the room, so silent that I didn't realize he was there until he spoke.
"Mikael's hate was at least justified." I found myself saying. I lean forward on the couch, looking at the lamp and ashtray on the coffee table. I had been realigning them since I've been confined to this room. That, I figured, is why Camille diagnosed me with situational obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD, for better words.
"How do you figure?" Elijah asks me, sitting down in a antique chair that was beside the couch opposite me.
"Mikael was cheated on." I pick my words carefully. I didn't want to delve into those torturous decades with his father. How much I suffered because I tried to save them. The way Aurora had chained me up, bled me dry. "He believed Nik was his son but he turned out not to be." I shrug. "Rage is amplified for a vampire. It becomes wrath. The only excuse Mary has for wanting me dead, is because I 'took her family'." My words were mocking.
"Let's play a board game. Monopoly?" Camille gets up and scans the bookshelf. There was board games in a section of it. "A puzzle?"
"Not this again." Elijah rubs his temples. I smile slightly, her attempts at brightening up the mood in the room not going unnoticed.
"Let's play chess." I offer. "I'm calling white."
Length 2975 words