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(Y/N) held her breath, smiling at her husband, Kol, as he left the abattoir in the hunt for Marcel Gerard. As soon as he left though, her smile dropped as she began coughing up blood into the tissue she had tucked under her leg away from anyone’s eyesight.
She had been hiding her illness for months as she knew her family, the Mikaelson’s, would be overly concerned as vampires don’t get ill. It was against the genetic make-up of the creatures of the night to get ill.
At first it started off as a headache but (Y/N) put it down to a hangover even though she knew she only had a beer the night before. It wasn’t long before the nausea and fatigue sent in. However, (Y/N) is over 500 years old, she knew when to hide her weaknesses in aid of others. But hiding things can’t last forever, (Y/N) was about to find that out the hard way.
Rebekah stormed through her home shouting any name of her family she could think of when she saw (Y/N) and called her, drawing her attention from the tissue to her sister-in-law.
“Rebekah, what can I do you for,” (Y/N) said from the sofa, ticking the tissue in between the cushions before Rebekah could see.
“Have you seen the crossbow from the dining room. Nik asked me to bring it to him.” (Y/N) shook her head and gestures for Rebekah to sit down so she could calm her slightly as she was quite agitated. “I suppose I could drop for a minute. Move over.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Rebekah sat down quite heavily with agitation, before shuffling the blanket she was sitting on from underneath her. Her hand drew something else up though; the tissues (Y/N) has been hiding. “What’s this?”
The younger vampire moved to snatch them back from her sister but broke down in a coughing fit from the sudden movement. It took a moment for her to re-catch her breath but she knew that her secret had been exposed.
“Are you coughing up blood? Because that’s not good, you’re a vampire. This doesn’t happen.” Rebekah fretted, standing up again as she knew that she couldn’t stay still whilst these thoughts were running through her head.
“Don’t make a fuss, Freya doesn’t know what is is, but she is looking and she says there is a chance I’ll survive.”
“A chance? Only a chance!” Rebekah said, her voice suddenly softing as she realised her best friend and sister could die. “Does Kol know?”
(Y/N) went to speak but was interrupted by a voice behind her, “Does Kol know what? Talking about me,are you, Darling?”
“Tell him, he needs to know. I’ll tell the others but you need to tell him.”
(Y/N) shuffled on the sofa to make room for her husband to sit next to her comfortably. She gestured for him to sit down, smiling sadly as he did so.
“(Y/N), Darling, You’re scaring me.”
As she started to tell her husband about her struggles with her failing health, all he could do was look down and try to make sense of what he was being told. He was only broken from his daze when he felt a limp body crash into his side.
~-~-
The flames of the hundreds of candles, warmly lit up the abattoir floor as Freya Mikaelson continued to chant. She knew she only had this one chance to save (Y/N)’s life and even this spell had major risks. But she had to try. She had to keep to the promise she had made Niklaus when he found out about this illness their sister suffered with.
The blood pooled under the paper moved towards the ring of salt in the middle of the room. Slowly it was joined by the pool of blood underneath the feather directly opposite where the paper rested.
Pages of the Original Witch’s grimoire began to flicker as the blood started to rise upwards, combining to make one, and the chanting of Latin grew stronger and louder.
Until it all stopped.
The room was silent, the blooding falling back towards the floor, and the pages sat still. The candles no longer permitted light and remnants of smoke from where the flames once sat.
~-~-
(Y/N) sat up from where she was lying on the floor to find herself alone. The place she was in was void of colour, furniture and people. The only two things she could see was a key and a door with two locks, one on each side.
Quickly, she grabbed it, inspecting very scratch and dent on the key when she saw words inscribed on the opposite side: one is life, on is death; choose a side and take a breath.
Standing up, with the key still in hand, (Y/N) froze and inspected the white void around her, looking for any other signs of life. She was taken from her inspection when she heard Kol.
(Y/N), Darling. Please. Please come back to me. I can’t be without you.
One by one, she heard different voices call out to her asking, no begging, for her to wake up. Each more distant from the last as she tried to aim her focus onto the door and her impending choice.
She didn’t even notice the silence until she heard the voice of her local priest start to speak: “Today, we are gathered here to celebrate the life of (Y/N) Mikaelson.”
(Y/N) froze.
Her family thought she was dead? Was she dead? Was this room life final cruel joke on her to make her think she had a chance at happiness before she was sucked into an eternity of torture for her lifetimes of sin.
In her haze, (Y/N) didn’t realise that she had placed the key into one of the old locks, and therefore choosing that path. She stood back as the key began to turn itself and the door began to open into a forest.
Hesitantly, she stepped inside, finding herself looking at a mother and young child, only seven years old at most.
“Hello?” she said stepping towards the two” Sorry, I don’t mean to bother you, but could you tell me where am I?”
“You’re in the bayou, in New Orle-” the woman froze halfway through her sentence when she turned to face the stranger to find it wasn’t a stranger at all. “(Y/N)?”
“My God! Hayley, ” she stepped forward to hug the woman she had grown close too. ”Who’s this then?”
“It’s Hope.”
(Y/N) shook her head as she stepped backwards in shook. Hope was only two years old when she last saw her. It can’t have been five years. It had only been five minutes.”
“Somethings wrong.”
~-~-
After agreeing to tell Hayley what had happened when they returned home, the three Mikaelsons made their way back into New Orleans to the Abbatoir to hopefully find the other members of their clan.
It would be in their luck that they were all present, however, they were arguing like there was no tomorrow.
“Guys!” Hayley shouted as she walked in, temporarily stopping the yelling, “something has happened. It’s (Y/N)!”
Klaus walked forward, trying to intimidate Hayley but she stood her ground, “What about her?” He all but growled.
It had been agreed that nobody would speak her name after the funeral as Kol was still distraught over losing his wife. Nightmares constantly plagued the Original. Not even Freya’s herbal remedies could ease his pain.
“I’m alive!” (Y/N) said in an almost whisper, trying not to frighten anyone with her presence but her efforts were for naught when she saw the expressions of her family.
Kol sped forward, grabbing the woman who looked like his wife and sounded like his wife by the throat before slamming her into a wall, “Who are you?!”
“Ireland, 1498.” She croaked out.” You promised that you would kill anyone-”
Suddenly she was dropped and pulled into a bone crushing hug. Kol holding her tightly and never wanting to let her go again.
The murmurs of her family grew stronger behind her until Hayley spoke up, telling everyone to leave the married couple alone to reconnect once more.