NOW: 2011

THERE ARE STARS IN THE SKY TONIGHT. Millions of specks in the endless tapestry of the night blinking down at them, which makes Alessia wonder why it is that vampires can't walk in sunlight without their daylight rings, but they're free to do so in the night, even if the sky is clear enough for the shimmering caress of starlight. Leaning against the doorway to the rooftop entrance of Blueridge Psychiatric Hospital, sharp eyes tracing patterns in the stars, Alessia tries to recall her high school astrophysics knowledge. Almost every star in the sky is a burning, fist-like fusion of elements, so bright and so magnificent its light reaches the Earth even solar systems and light years away. After all, the sun is also just a star. What makes it different from the rest?

A cool breeze picks up, sneaking a cold hand up the hem of her black mini skirt. Alessia smoothes her skirt down over her thighs.

Alessia sighs, pushing down her rampant thoughts. It is somewhere close to the crack of dawn, and nothing even remotely interesting has happened. The only reason she'd left the house was because she was bored, and Tyra had made this mission out to be something exciting. If only she'd known how much time she would be wasting, how the boredom was smothering her now, she would've just stayed home with Sonja.

They'd been on this roof for hours, waiting for so long that Alessia could hear the clock ticking, had watched the clouds dissolve as the night cleared and the moon climbed to its crest. Just waiting. It seems like this was all they ever did. Wait and wait and wait.

Ten years ago, eternity was something Alessia could only dream about—not that she ever wondered about it, nor cared about living forever—and now time seemed to be the only thing she had plenty of. And what could she do with it? She'd joined a band that had many names over the past ten years, and perhaps more before. She'd learnt how to play guitar and bass, how to write songs, how to unstitch the chords and thread her own heart into the music. It'd taken her a morbidly long time.

When she was in college, she'd been a music psychology major, but cheer had consumed most of her time. Back then, she'd been living off of the thrill that cheer shot into her veins, back then, it was stunt and stunt and stunt, tumbling until the world was a blur and her muscles were numb. Back then, she bruised easy. Back then, joining a rock band was the last thing on her mind.

Now, she was supposed to be thirty, but her body retained her twenty-year-old self, preserved like a Triassic bug in Baltic amber. Now, all she can think about is the heat of the stage lights, the grit in Tyra's guitar, the fierce beat of the drum. They hadn't played in ages. Not since Charlotte, their former lead guitarist got staked in the heart by some vampire hunters when they played a show in Virginia and died for a second time. No resurrections this time.

Now, here they were in Ohio standing on top of a mental hospital, looking for a new member to fill in the open spot, the inclusion criteria being that she had to be a final girl. Someone with fight, someone who could walk out of the bloodbath with the knife in their teeth. Tyra likes the poetry of it, Alessia supposes. Why Ohio, specifically, Alessia isn't sure. Tyra had a witch friend who owed her a favour, and divined that a massacre was about to happen here. Somehow, that'd led them to Blueridge, a seemingly arbitrary location for something so monumental to transpire.

It is Hungry Ghost month, Alessia thinks, as the screams of the patients within the psychiatric hospital's walls grate against her ears like nails on a chalkboard, death is on our doorstep. Death is everywhere.

Snaking a hand under the strap of her red tank top and pressing her palm against her chest, Alessia tries to imagine warm skin, a heartbeat, the biting chill of the evening breeze. Nothing. No pulse rises to brush her fingers, no violent shudder from the feeling of phantom cobwebs crawling over her skin, and though her skin is cold all over, she feels nothing. Instead, all she can feel is the panic, a cresting crescendo inside the building, can smell the fear, and all that blood—good God, all that blood. Pain pricks at her bottom lip as her fangs slide out from her gums, seeking a vein and the rapture of warm skin.

It is Hungry Ghost month. The dead walk among us. The dead are hungry.

"Hey, Bride of Chucky," Alessia drawls, picking at her claw-sharp nails, admiring her fresh manicure. She glances over to the edge of the rooftop, where Tyra sits, still as death, moonlight illuminating her hair, so blonde it was almost white. "How long are we going to sit here? It's getting boring and I'm getting snacky."

"Be quiet."

Long, pale legs dangling over the edge, the girl surveys the streets below for the millionth time. Patience is a virtue one learns to acquire when they've survived a good millennia, and Tyra Mikaelson is a reservoir of it. She's waiting for something to happen, but it's been hours and there's a murmur of uncertainty amongst the three girls standing watch behind her for the same reason. Even Tyra has to admit that she's having her doubts.

Something malevolent is festering, preparing to rear its ugly head in the building she presently sat on the apex of. Hospitals attracted death like flies to honey, and if the sound of screams and tearing skin emanating from inside the building were any indication, tonight hosted an infestation. How she'd come to this conclusion wasn't procured from logical conjecture. Rather, the intel had come directly through a pretty psychic from the heart of the city. Everyone knew that the credibility of a witch's ulterior motives had reason to be called into question, but the reliability of their visions was infallible. Sabine and her wild hair and glowing eyes was no exception, even though the witch had taken the liberty to personally deliver the message to Tyra.

So the problem tonight does not lie with what had led Tyra to such a foul place. It lies with the vexing issue that none of them know what, precisely, they are looking for, attributable to the fact that all psychics deal with non-specifics.

"Should we just go back and call that witch-bitch out as a fluke now that she's sent us out on this stupid wild goose chase?" Alessia snaps waspishly, crouching down beside Tyra on the ledge. It's a precarious position she's set herself in, one light tap and she could so easily topple over and tumble to her death, but Alessia has never been one to take her own safety into consideration. Dark eyes gleaming with an unsettling vacancy, Alessia wriggles her fingers with intent, her nails, painted a familiar crimson, had been filed down to razor-sharp points, like claws. Fitting, for Alessia's catty personality. "We could carve out her teeth. One for every non-specific piece of bullshit she's ever fed us."

For a morbid fraction of a second, Tyra has the temptation to see what would happen if she prodded her bassist in the right direction.

"As fun as that sounds, I can't let you do that," Tyra deadpans, flicking her fingers derisively at Alessia. "Besides, we need the witches working with us if we ever want to leave this stupid town, so if Sabine thinks something bad's going to happen tonight, we'll take her word for it."

Unimpressed, Alessia rolls her eyes and nudges an empty bottle of Corona with the tip of her chunky combat boot until it tips over the ledge. Somewhere below, it smashes to pieces on the ground, the sound ringing in her ears like a grenade explosion. Between her ribs, the hot knot of boredom slackens, satisfaction uncurling its fist in her chest, but in the next second, the sensation elapses. That's the trade-off, Alessia supposes. All time does is pass, and every novelty with it, and nothing is new, and everything is just excruciatingly boring.

"How do we even know for sure there will be someone who makes it out? And if they're even a girl." Alessia's lip curls, her tone tinged with skepticism. "What's to say a man wouldn't make it out? Do we just start taking in men, now? I thought our whole brand was that we're an all-girl rock band."

"Statistically, that's not possible," Tyra muses, "men make mistakes. Women tend to live longer because we minimise risk."

"Statistically," Alessia mocks, "in every slasher movie I've ever seen, the final girl's always been a virgin. And white. And I hate to break it to you, but Sonja and I check none of those boxes. Either the statistics are diversifying, or you're just generalising. And in case you haven't clocked, this is a literal nuthouse. None of these blood-bags have a single shred of self-preservation in them." Even though she hasn't been human in years, Alessia feels her cold, dead heart twist inside of her chest like a reflex. A shard of memory threatens to surface from the depths of her mind, but she flicks it back into the dark and, as if by turning her back on the obscured Ohio horizon, she is effectively shutting that door.

Tyra twists round, her piercing gaze staking though Alessia, and in her disquietude, there is only a callousness that cuts down to the bone. "Careful, Alessia. Just because I made you, doesn't mean I have endless patience with you. I've seen empires rise and fall, how time can wipe civilisations off the face of this earth and let another grow in its place. I brought you into this life through my own goodwill, I can just as easily unmake you."

Some unnamed feeling blazed in Alessia's gut, and as much as she wants to snap back at Tyra, as much as she wants to say, you sound just like my mother, she bites her tongue and keeps her mouth shut. Living for a thousand years must dry up one's reserve of humanity.

So much for being equals, Alessia thinks, bitterly.

Just as she's about to cross to the other side of the roof and plot, in graphic detail, how she might kick Tyra off the roof and rip her hair from her scalp, the sound of the wrought iron gate screeching open tears through the eerie silence. In the midst of their argument, the bloodbath must've drawn to a close. Peering over the ledge, Alessia watches as a shadowy figure—a girl, judging by the airy quality of her ragged breaths and faint sobs—sprints toward the driveway. Behind her, just a second later, a hooded figure stumbles down the steps. The girl spins round, something gleaming in her hands. A shard of broken glass. Bathed in the moonlight, Alessia can now make out some of the girl's features. Granted, there's so much blood saturating her hair and her ugly hospital clothes, it's hard to tell the details apart.

"Here we go," Alessia muses, her cool gaze sweeping over the scene. "Maybe tonight might be interesting after all."

* * *

Sonja waters dead plants. Clad in a faded green shirt that clings inelegantly to her narrow frame and flannel pyjama pants, Sonja has the unkept look of an artist. Magnetic and intense. Until Alessia spots the white socks and Adidas slippers combo going on. Thing is, Sonja hasn't changed out of the same clothes in four days, but it's not because she's depressed or even because she doesn't leave the house. She just doesn't care, even when she has to go to the store for something. She's in pajamas all the time. Flannel pants that fray at the edges, most of them stained with paint, and bedroom slippers or ratty converse. Her shirts have worn holes in the fading fabric, but she claims that she has an emotional attachment to them. Something about her brother, who should be sixty or seventy now.

Societally constructed expectations just don't phase you anymore when you've been immortal since the 70s, Alessia supposes.

Back-facing Alessia, Sonja crouches by a cluster of wilting plants, watering them with a rusted tin watering can, humming Here Comes The Sun to herself. Sonja's not a singer, and not everyone can hold a note even when humming, but it is evident Sonja doesn't care. She must've heard the others enter, but she doesn't stop, entirely immersed in her own business as she always is.

Shutting the front door and twisting the lock, Alessia spins the keys around her index finger. Once she's generated enough momentum, she flicks it across the room at Sonja's head. It shoots through the air like a silver bullet. In a flash, Sonja's hand closes around the set of keys before it can blow a hole through her skull. Alessia smirks.

"Weak throw," Sonja snorts, flicking Alessia a devious look over her shoulder. A cigarette dangles from between her teeth, and there is a heady haze of smoke gathering in milky tendrils over her head, her own personal thunderstorm.

Alessia shoots her a saccharine smile, dripping with venom and vitriol, and vaults over the back of the brown leather sofa. She hooks an elbow over the backrest, curling her slender legs under her and watches Sonja attempt to play doctor to her dying plants.

Meanwhile, Tyra skulks past, an unconscious final girl tucked under one arm, and immediately heads up the stairs. The entire way home, Tyra had single-handedly carried the new girl across state-lines and through towns without stopping. They'd made it back to LA as daylight began to break. Perks of having supersonic vampire speed. She says nothing to Sonja, and Sonja tracks Tyra's retreating back with a distantly curious stare until Tyra finally disappears out of sight upstairs.

Even in the light slanting through the window, the plants gathered in the one corner of the living room that Sonja's situated in have never looked more tortured. Sonja plucks the cigarette from between her teeth with slender fingers, shuffling around like a crab in squat-position. Her movements are suffused with the mechanical gracelessness of someone with lanky limbs and a body made of lean sinew and sharp angles, but never awkward or ugly.

Sonja doesn't turn to face Alessia. Instead, she keeps checking on the leaves of one of her sadder-looking Monstera plants, lifting them up one-by-one, inspecting them with a critical eye. The water in the watering can in her hand sloshes around audibly.

"You do know over-watering is a thing, right?"

"It's all good, Big A," Sonja says, flicking Alessia a flippant grin, "I got this. Just trust the process. Anyway, did you get us a guitarist? How'd it go?"

"Yeah, it was fine."

"Just fine?"

Alessia shrugs. What could she say, really? She could lie, tell Sonja it'd been fun, but what was the point? It wouldn't serve either of them.

Thankfully, Sonja doesn't press.

"You think this guy could use a little more sun?"

Alessia sweeps her gaze over the plants and their ceramic pots, handmade, all of them, by Sonja. Somewhere in the house is a room full of hand-sculpted clay pots and bowls, a kindle and a pottery wheel. Near the dusty glass windows overlooking the backyard, there are the hole-riddled leaves of Monstera Adansonii, the rounded bulbs of Devil's Ivy hanging in suspended pots from the ceiling, the stripes of Calathea Never Never, and the saddest one of all—the unsaturated red of Chinese Evergreen. They're all browned and paper-thin, drained of life, and Alessia has the urge to scrunch the leaves of Devil's Ivy between her fingers just to hear them crackle and crumble apart. Sonja's essentially turned their living room into an indoor jungle, a soothing paracosm of aesthetic peacetime. But she's killed all of them. Unintentionally, by the looks of it. After a full year of living with her ex-roommate, Lila, who nurtured plants more than she nurtured herself, Alessia had picked up a little bit of survivable knowledge of certain plants and their needs.

"It's a low-light plant," Alessia says, twisting back round to pick up her phone, which she'd left on the egg-shaped glass coffee table. "It's not supposed to."

"Huh." Sonja scratches her chin pensively, a thoughtful expression crossing her face. "I can never get this shit right."

She says it so nonchalantly, like it's not a personal critique of her own ability to handle a living thing, and if it weren't for the fact that she spent every waking moment—if not with Tyra or in their rehearsal space tapping out a new drum line—tending to all the plants scattered throughout the house, Alessia might've thought she didn't care.

Heaving a sigh like an arthritic old man struggling off a couch, Sonja pushes herself up with her hands on her knees and rises to stand and turns to face Alessia.

Sonja is tall—though not as tall as Tyra, who towers over the rest in a way that dominates and terrifies, rather, Sonja is tall in a way that shades the others from the downpour with the care of an umbrella, maybe an anchoring force that grounds them—and dark, and her features are strikingly sharp. Freckles constellate her face, a boneyard of dead stars in a tan cosmos, and the way she wrinkles her nose each time she spots a brown leaf is almost humanlike.

"Come," Sonja says, ushering Alessia over, "I wanna show you something. I need your opinion."

"What for?"

"Been working on something special." Sonja flings a loose arm around Alessia's shoulders as the younger girl approaches and steers Alessia towards the backdoor. She smells like acrylics and dirt.

The irony is that Sonja loves plants, but she sucks at taking care of them. Time means something different to them now that the clock inside their chests have stopped beating, and they have eternity sitting in their palms, so she's always tending to dead plants. Granted, Alessia has to give her some credit for one thing. In the midst of their massive garden is a wreck of a Volvo that might've once been pretty, a vintage scrap that Sonja found wrapped around a tree circa the 70s, when everyone was wearing hippie headbands and tie-dye and LSD strips stamped on the red of their tongues. In truth, the garden resembles more of a forest now—there was little to no organisation, and everything on this plot of land is wild, including the flowers spilling over the long, untrimmed grass. While stalking through the shrubbery, Alessia has to watch for snakes and gophers, and when they stop in front of the Volvo, which had since sprouted vines that wrapped around its glistening body like pythons, as if the ground were attempting to swallow it.

Pending masterpiece of forty years and counting, Sonja calls it. Every now and then, Alessia finds herself standing in the garden, staring at it, but not how you'd stare at something in a museum. Less admiration and more like something you can't quite understand the value of and can't quite wrap a coherent thought around. Could you call it your art if you'd just tossed a piece of scrap metal onto the ground and let nature take its course, have its way with it?

The end of a mechanical age, Sonja said, once, hands on her hips, nodding with utmost seriousness at the wreckage bursting with greenery, so conquered by vegetation that Alessia only caught glimpses of the glare of the sun winking against the metal hood and the fragmented mirror peeking out from under a cluster of leaves. The earth's slow triumph. Mother Nature metabolises the metal into the ground and the forest takes over.

Don't know if this counts as a forest, said Alessia.

Ye of little faith, youngin', Sonja pointed out. It will be, one day. You'll see. The forest always triumphs. You know Chernobyl? Nobody thought there was ever a chance in hell that anything could ever grow there anymore because of the radiation and all, scorched the earth and left it infertile, scarred, no-man's land. They were wrong.

Right. They had time. An ocean of it.

"Come," Sonja says, beckoning Alessia into the greenhouse.

The greenhouse is one of Sonja's favourite haunts. Surprisingly, unlike the plants intentionally placed within the house, the plants inside the greenhouse are surviving. Sonja says it's because she hasn't touched any of the plants in the greenhouse. The previous owner of the house grew them, and when they moved out, the greenhouse remained, and in the months before Tyra and Sonja bought the place and made it their home, summer had ravaged the space with weeds and climbing vines and greenery left unchecked. It seemed to Sonja that any resistance to the natural takeover was futile. But she comes in here every once in awhile to paint. Following Sonja into the greenhouse, Alessia steps over the broken pots that'd been knocked over, swept to the ground by the thick torsos of vines snaking over the ground. In the middle of the room, a set of half-finished paintings sit on easels, cups of muddied water waiting at their feet. Upon closer inspection, Alessia notices that Sonja's been drawing back profiles. Silhouettes in sunlight. Light play. While Sonja paints everything that seems to catch her eye, or whenever inspiration strikes her, it's clear that she's going through a phase of capturing people in candid moments.

"Here," Sonja says, standing in front of an easel, hands propped on her hips, beaming with pride at her latest creation.

Alessia cocks her head.

On the canvas, the painting is bathed in blood, is an open wound, is a primal scream. Alessia is no artist, but she knows texture when she sees it. Where the paint thickened in seemingly arbitrary spots, it resembled pieces of flesh scarred into the canvas. And at the heart of it, is unmistakably Tyra's side profile—Sonja's got it all. The elegant slope of her romantic nose, the round youth of her cheek, the white-blonde hair basked in holy light, lips pulled back in a vicious snarl, fangs dipped in crimson, and eyes so void and dark, and with such unknown depth they held their own gravitational pull. In the painting, Tyra holds up a human heart, her hands are stained red, like she's torn it out of a live chest. Upon closer inspection, Alessia finds a black spot on the side of it, right on the right ventricle. A rot that's begun, persistent and pervasive, like spoiled fruit. Someone's corrupted heart.

"Whose is it?" Alessia asks, pointing at the heart.

Sonja shrugs. "I'm not sure."

And even in Sonja's closed smile, for all of her care-less and casual indifference, there is a shadow in her expression that raises its finger to her lips that says there's something locked up inside of her throat that's trying to get out. But she won't let it. And it'll stay there forever if she could help it. A shadow that says: there are worse things than all this blood and violence.

* * *

SHE LOOKS SO SMALL, weak as a rain-drowned bird with a broken wing nestled amid tissue paper in a wooden box, the white sheets pulled around her like a snow burial. Gazing upon the unconscious form of Mallory Bailey, final girl and soon-to-be guitarist, Tyra lingers by the bedside like an afterthought.

In death, Mallory's pallor seemed ghoul-like, so thin she seemed barely there, one wave of a hand away from dissolving into air, so colourless despite the blood soaking her hospital clothes and skin, her blonde hair so matted she'd seemed feral for a second, as she'd held the knife in her hands. Up until the killer was dead, and Mallory had risen from the blood, eyes wide and wild, made new. In that moment, suspended in the rapture of violence, Tyra remembered the same day, ten years ago, the night Alessia had clawed her way out of the darkness only to become it, could see a shard of that lust for vengeance and viciousness in Mallory for a split second. When the girl had dropped the weapon, she'd stared at the body for so long Tyra thought she might devour it, and then Tyra had seen: it wasn't rage, but desperation, and it wasn't mania, but fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. Mallory, only eighteen, and already made a killer and horrified by it. In that moment, Tyra understood. Mallory was not Alessia. There was the darkness, and there Mallory stood, despite it.

For all her talk about the easy replacement of her bandmates, it still felt wrong to put Mallory in Charlotte's empty room, which had been cleared out after they'd burned the body of their ex-bandmate, so she'd chosen another. Even though they'd been living in LA for years now, the house still had several rooms waiting for purpose. It'd been Sonja's duty to do up the new room in preparation for Mallory's arrival, and all she had done—all she could've done—was made the bed, out out a bottle of blood for Mallory's waking. Blank walls stared down at her, waiting for colour, waiting to be given life and livelihood.

For a moment, Tyra's hand twitches at her side, itching to tuck a lock of blood-soaked hair out of her delicate face, so still and so at peace. Sweet, young thing, Tyra thinks, she'd make the perfect addition to their band. She would learn all the songs, and learn how to spin poetry out of her own darkness. Perhaps this is what they need—a fresh perspective. All their songs were ripped into existence from the heart of violence. Mallory would be an interesting experiment.

Outside, she can hear the door to their backyard whining open, and hears Sonja luring Alessia into their wild garden, into the greenhouse, their light conversation—mostly, Sonja's silken voice—tugging her back into reality through an invisible string. Tyra tears her gaze from Mallory's prone silhouette. No time for sentiment.

She leaves, closing the door behind her. Her own bedroom is just two doors down, settled between the rehearsal studio and Sonja's bedroom. Between the music and the only person she's never had a doubt about, there stands the door to a sort of sanctuary she's carved out in her own name. Running her blood-stained hands through her fair hair, Tyra twists the knob to her door open.

And stops dead in her tracks.

Standing in the middle of the room, fingering the rack of vintage guitars, the man in the crisp, black suit is every inch a walking nightmare.

Cursing viciously in her head, Tyra watches him, grasping the doorknob so tight she feels the metal warping under her fingers, as he turns, hand drifting back to his side, and drinks in the sight of her as if staring into a frozen lake, his dark eyes, twin mirror of hers, taking inventory of her with cool curiosity—the blood on her hands, the black fishnet tights wrapped around her pale legs, the black lace nightgown slipped over her slender figure, the silver buckled boots, her layers of necklaces and their gleaming pendants catching the light—could feel him searching for something in her face, a shard of recognition beneath the black eyeshadow and the black ice in her eyes, perhaps.

She should've known. The light was on, she'd seen it creeping out from the crack under her door, but she'd thought nothing of it, had even assumed she'd simply forgotten to turn it off before she'd left to fish for final girls. She should've known. She'd let her guard down. She would pay for this tonight.

Even dressed like a diplomat, Tyra knows, first-hand, the unspeakable violence Elijah Mikaelson's hands are capable of. Panic flickers in her chest, a flame catching, catching, catching, until she is blazing with primal instinct.

Run.

"Hello, Tyra," Elijah says, his tone light, as though it hadn't been centuries since they'd last seen each other. "I hope you don't mind, your friend, Sonja, invited us in. Klaus, don't be rude, come greet your sister."

Fear ices her veins, kicking wildly at her ribs.

A theatrically laboured sigh, laced with dispassion, emanates from the other side of her room. Tentatively, Tyra pushes the door open wider, peering into the other side of her bedroom. And there he is.

Black leather jacket, blond hair, a ticking bomb with no visible timer. Klaus Mikaelson stands by the window, gazing out into the garden, his broad back to his sister. For a brief moment, he meets her eyes in the reflection in the glass, his image in the window pane an apparition of death.

"Yes, Tyra," Klaus drawls, amusement trickling into his tone, "it's been a heartbreakingly long time."

Tyra knows the power that comes with being an Original vampire. She has killed monsters far bigger and stronger than her. But Klaus is something else entirely. If she knows anything about her brother, it was that he was vicious, evil incarnate. Once, a couple centuries ago, he'd shattered every bone in her hand for fun, just to get a piece of information out of her. As a vampire, Tyra had healed fairly quickly. But it wasn't the permanence of breaking her that he wanted. It was the pain. It was the promise that, if he broke her hand enough times, even though the bones would heal, there was no guarantee that it would heal right, and if that happened, she would never play an instrument again. All along, Klaus had known that this would destroy her. This is the only thing he knows: how to rip a heart out, how to end someone's life without killing them. Which was why, from the moment she could, she'd cut and run.

"Not long enough," Tyra says through gritted teeth, her tone icy enough to freeze empires. Tension wracks her spine, her back ramrod straight. One foot out the door, one foot in. "Why are you here?"

"Because you never answered any of my messages," Elijah points out, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"And there's a reason I didn't," Tyra says, airily.

"We have important family business. Your presence is required." Elijah extends a hand toward her, whether meaning for her to take it or as a threat—if you don't do as I say, I will make you—Tyra isn't sure of, but she recognises the audacity of instating his command in her home. Such is an older brother. "Why don't you come in, have a seat? We need to talk."

"What part of me ignoring you for a whole week straight isn't getting the message across?" Tyra drawls, keeping her chin up as she closes her bedroom door, keeping an eye on Klaus, who remains unmoving and silent by the window, in her peripheral vision as she crosses over to the desk, a fair—but still unsafe—distance from both her brothers. "I don't care. What happens with you folk is not my problem anymore. I. Don't. Care. Elijah."

"Yes, you've made that very clear in the last nine-hundred years of radio silence from you."

"So what's confusing now?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration, Elijah lets out a laboured exhale. "You're being a brat, Tyra. We're family. No matter how many times you try to run, the proof is in our blood. Apart, we are at our weakest, and right now, we cannot afford this vulnerability."

"I am not six years old," Tyra hisses. "Do not talk down to me like that."

From where he stands, across the room, Klaus makes a sound of mirth, almost a laugh, but he says nothing otherwise. Knowing Elijah, he must've instructed Klaus to remain quiet, to speak only when permitted. Somehow, Elijah had managed to convince Klaus to have this confrontation on his terms—that's how her brothers have always operated. Good cop, bad cop. If Elijah's negotiations fell through with no result, then Klaus would come for her, daggers drawn, out for blood. Somehow, Tyra much preferred if he screamed at her, if he threatened to dagger her the way he did the others and to her so many times before. Somehow, the silence feels oppressive, weighing on her ribs like a boot threatening to crush her lungs into her spine, prickling like fire on her skin. Like the eminence of something much worse than violence or death prowling in the shadows, waiting just beyond the tree-line for her to make a misstep.

"Then, listen." Elijah snaps, eyes sharpened, slicing through Tyra and pinning her in place. "Klaus is in trouble, which puts us all at risk, too. He needs us to be there for him. We need you, Tyra, just as much as you need us."

"I don't need—"

Elijah lifts a hand, effectively silencing Klaus.

"And what's this idiot done that's so bad?" Tyra sighs, draping a hand over the back of her chair. In truth, she could not care less about what Klaus has gotten himself into. In truth, all she can think about is getting them both out of this house, and getting the hell out of here. Already, Tyra was scrambling through her mind, ripping up the floorboards, searching for ways out of the country. Rifling through a millennia of contacts in her memory, finding one to exhaust to get somewhere safe, somewhere her family couldn't reach her again. It didn't matter that they were here, that something was clearly waiting for them on the horizon.

Elijah lets out a sigh. "He got a girl pregnant. Her name is Hayley. She's... she's a werewolf. And for some reason, all the witches in the world want to kill this baby. They would do anything to get to it."

Incredulous, Tyra scoffs. "Klaus, a father. Never thought I'd see that day come. And a werewolf baby, too. You've got your work cut out for you."

"I know," Elijah muses, and for a brief second, he almost cracks a smile. Almost. A shadow passes over his face. "Tyra, that baby is one of us. Whoever they may be, they are a Mikaelson. We cannot let it fall into harm. We can't let the witches take this baby away. We must protect them. It's our duty."

Duty, Elijah says, like it's supposed to mean something. Family's always been complicated, Tyra knows. Families are created for social utility, for survival, to carry legacies and ensure the survivability of a species. Alessia said that once, when she'd been watching her family at her own funeral from a distance ten years ago. Family is made for nurture and for social support. No living thing is born alone, and all humans need social networks to do more than survive. To thrive. But to be bound to something she wants no part of simply because of blood ties... The concept never sat right with Tyra.

Family is a sinkhole, really. It takes and it takes and it takes.

"You want me to come back to protect some unborn child?" Tyra deadpans. "Look, I'm sure the problem will solve itself. Anything can happen in pregnancy. Klaus' werewolf girl might not even make it to term—"

"Don't be cruel," Elijah says, his voice firm, tone edged with warning. "You are a Mikaelson, Tyra. You don't turn your back on family."

"We stopped being family centuries ago," Tyra snaps, rage blazing in her eyes as she stands, rising to meet Elijah's condescending stare. Desperation twists inside of her. It's clear that neither of them would take no for an answer. And they aren't willing to listen. They have never listened. Hysteria rears its ugly head, a swirling mass threatening to break over the dam of her composure. "Everywhere we go together, we bring misery and suffering. You call us a family, but what family has hurt each other this much just by staying together? Klaus has daggered us a hundred times over, along with any chances of us loving him. I've seen the way you two try to control everything while the rest of us are forced to live on your terms. That's not family. That's not living. I've tried. I stayed for a hundred years, I played the role of the good little sister, but you were the one who decided that you wanted more. You want us to be a family on your terms, and I simply won't have it. I won't. I've had enough. We've had our run. I've told you, I don't want to be part of the family drama anymore. I am happy where I am now, and I will not go back to the mess you two have made. Whatever this is, however it may turn out to be, I wish you the best. But don't you dare involve me."

Klaus snorts.

"Tyra, Tyra, Tyra," Klaus sighs, turning to face her, a wicked smile curving his lips, sharp as a blade's edge. "Always the runaway. Always so quick to discard your blood ties when you no longer need us. You think you're happy? With them? With all this?" He makes a vague gesture at her room, its many posters, the platinum records mounted on the walls. "If you think your silly little band, your nomadic ventures, and your rockstar fantasies can fulfil you... You're more of a fool than I thought you were. I worry, really, that you're indulging in a distraction. It's not healthy, sister. I think you need to come home to us, to be cured from your maladaptive daydream. But, oh, you look a little resistant to the idea." Klaus' smile grows wider, and Tyra's stomach swirls with the cold poison of dread. He taps a finger against the window, in the direction of the greenhouse. "Maybe I'll start with that one—the pretty one—Alessia, was it? I'll cut her up nice, scatter her remains over your backyard. It'll be such a shame to see her go, but it has to be done, I suppose. See if you're more willing to listen then."

Fury flickers in her throat. Snarling, Tyra bares her teeth at Klaus. "I will destroy you."

"Or maybe I'll take the other one—Sonja—"

Red slashes across her vision. All she can think about is ripping Klaus' head off. A savage shriek tears loose from her throat as she lunges at Klaus, swiping a clawed hand at his face. In a flash, before she can even touch him, a strong arm wraps around her waist and slams her onto the ground, knocking the breath from her lungs. Elijah hovers over her, straining with effort to pin her to the ground while she bucked and thrashed, fighting him with all her might and desperation.

"I will never come with you!" Tyra growls, white-hot rage shredding through her with such force she'd begun to tremble with it. "I'll kill you! Let go of me, Elijah!"

Smirking, Klaus tuts. "Don't be crazy, Tyra."

"I AM NOT CRAZY, YOU PSYCHOPATH—"

Klaus snickers.

"Klaus, be quiet. Don't goad her." He glares down at Tyra then. "And you—be still. If you try to go after him again, I'll personally rip your legs off. Now, are you going to be calm, Tyra? Yes or no."

Seething, Tyra snaps her jaws at Elijah, glowering up at him, her anger a glittering sheen, like heatwaves on the road in the Californian summer. But she doesn't struggle. "Fine. Fine. Just get off me."

"Good," Elijah says, and loosens his grip on her, and stands. He extends a hand to help her up, but Tyra ignores him, choosing to remain on the floor. He shakes his head. "I can't say that I didn't try to do this diplomatically. You don't understand, Tyra. I am not asking. You have three days to tie up your business here—I know your band means a lot to you, so I will do you this one courtesy—and then you will come home to the old estate—you know which one—or I will have Klaus come get you himself. Judging by how much is on his plate at the moment, I'm sure he will have limited patience in dealing with you. Is that clear?"

"Get out of my house," Tyra says, her voice low, a threat, a warning, a promise of death. She levels them both with a furious glare. "I never want to see your faces ever again. You leave my girls out of this, or I swear, I will never, ever forgive you. And you will never see me ever again."

Already heading out the door, a smug Klaus in tow, Elijah taps his watch. "Three days. Don't say I didn't warn you."

"Tick-tock, baby sister," Klaus muses, and closes the door.

Only when they've closed the front door behind them, and only when Tyra is certain that they're both gone, does she let her composure crack. She draws her knees to her chest. In all of a thousand years, Tyra has never hated her brothers more. As she hears the backdoor open and close, Alessia and Sonja's voices drifting into the house, Tyra shuts her eyes and lets out a quaking breath.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
ok hear me out.... i think alessia and damon would be very close friends. they would not work out at all romantically because alessia is way too vain and wayyy too egotistical and self-centred, a direct mirror of s1 damon, but i believe that she would see a twin flame in him. like. platonic soulmate type beat yknow? or they'd probably recognise these similar qualities in each other - like looking in a mirror - and they'd DESPISE each other just for that. idk just a thought!

also,,, ik the context but,,,,, klaus' first look at his future gf!

i have decided that klaus and alessia's dynamic will be built upon these themes: