"Take me down to the river bend.
Take me down to the fighting end.
Wash the poison from off my skin.
Show me how to be whole again."

Castle of Glass: Linkin Park

Thanksgiving was almost here, and it was a miracle we had made it this long.

There was no sign of unrest, no signs that anyone was currently plotting against us or our children. If that wasn't enough to be thankful for, life was good. With their first birthday approaching much too quickly, things were a new type of normal around the Mikaelson place.

Boxed up in one of the many random rooms that Klaus had added onto the house without much intent to actually use were decorations that I had already bought, Mickey Mouse decorations to be exact. It was Theia and Alastor's favorite show, and any time it was on, it was as if it was a magic entrancement spell because they scarcely ever looked away as long as Mickey was currently playing. They would squeal or clap their hands any time they heard the Hot Dog Song, or sometimes even dance as best they could.

Have you ever seen two eleven month old babies dance? I have, and it is the most adorable thing you will ever see. They bob their heads, grab onto the couch and use their new leg power to shake their little butts . . . seriously, it was so adorable. I was glad we had managed to capture some of it on video.

There were boxes of decorations, as the party was going to be one to remember, but there were still some things missing, like background music. They had plenty of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse CDs, but I didn't want a million different songs. I wanted some things that pretty much revolved around the theme song and the Hot Dog Song.

I was so lost, scrolling through the different things on Amazon, that I didn't notice someone coming into the room, not until his arms were suddenly rubbing down mine, until his lips were moving their way down my neck.

My body immediately came to life, pressing back into the couch so I might get closer to him. He liked the response, and he only began to nibble the skin in response.

"The twins are both asleep."

I took a deep breath and let my eyes flutter shut, let myself get lost in the moment of Kol's lips moving along my skin like it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. Sometimes, he acted like it really was.

"I'll be done in just a second."

He sighed and was suddenly on the other side of the couch, falling down next to me so he could get a better view of what it was I was actually doing. One arm draped over my shoulder, and I watched the features of his face contort, watched the irritation take center stage beyond all the rest.

"Whatever you do, the damn Hot Dog Song better not be playing the entire time," he grumbled.

It was no secret that the song thoroughly annoyed Kol—it annoyed most of us at this point—but I laughed in response anyway. "It's their party. Not yours."

That wasn't the response he was hoping for, but he didn't press the issue further. There was something more important on his mind, something he would much rather press forward, so he leaned over towards me, burying his face into my neck so he could continue where he left off.

Seriously, this just wasn't even fair. The insatiability that came from being a newly turned Original hybrid—then tribrid—was supposed to subside. It was supposed to be easier, but it wasn't. Nine months later, and I still couldn't get enough of him.

Would I ever be able to get enough? Would eternity really be enough?

In theory, it should've been, but sometimes, it was hard to see. The cutesy phase of relationships, the part where the couple couldn't get enough of one another, was supposed to be long passed, yet it wasn't for us. Every little thing he did had the power to set off an explosion of desire, light my body up in ways that just wasn't healthy.

With his lips hungrily devouring my skin, with his teeth biting just enough to make it more than just gentle, it was hard to focus on what I was trying to do. I attempted to move him away, but he just came back stronger, reminding me that all of this insatiability was a two-sided thing. Kol craved me as desperately as I craved him.

I didn't let myself cave yet, but I found myself looking around, to ensure no one was gonna walk in and find us this way. Kol had stopped caring about the other people in the house, or maybe he had never cared. After all, I had been the one to make the "no PDA" rule to begin with. He just went along with it to make me happy.

Then there were moments like this when he just didn't care.

I was just thankful that there were less people in the house than there used to be. It used to be so overcrowded that there was no way to get away with this in the middle of the living room. It sort of started after we graduated high school, when everything really changed.

All of my life plans were completely shattered, but they had to be to have the life I never could've dreamed. It was better than anything I might've hoped for. While all of the people I had grown up with were slaving away in college, I was enjoying my life as a mother, as a tribrid.

The only way that I could remember that life wasn't a fairytale was the nightmares I had, still to this day. They weren't constant, but I didn't forget. I couldn't forget. I had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, and that's not something someone can just do and move on from, not without a thousand years of experience under their belts.

Sometimes, I thought the grief would consume me. It was so powerful sometimes that I struggled to get out of bed, but all Kol had to do was go get the twins, to bring them in there with me and remind me why I had done the horrible thing that I had done. It was moments like this, their first birthday party that would be normal, that made me do what I had done. They deserved to have as much chance at life as any other child, and I would continue ensuring they did.

Thanksgiving was going to do me a lot of good, though. I needed to see my sisters, and after having them in their lives daily for so long, the twins needed to see the rest of their family. It had been a while since they saw any of the people I had called family before the Mikaelsons came to town. Alaric got a job as the Occult Studies professor up at Whitmore. Damon and Jeremy had a place in McKinley, closer to Whitmore, so the only people they saw from before the Mikaelsons came to town were Stefan and Matt.

After his and Rebekah's summer romance had faded away, he didn't come around so often. Things weren't exactly tense, as they had both agreed that it would never work between them and stopped things mutually, but they were still attracted to one another. I wasn't entirely convinced they weren't still secretly fucking, as strictly friends, but Rebekah was insistent.

I was especially looking forward to seeing Caroline, even if she came back to town more often than any of the others. She tried to focus on school, but there were lonely weekends, when the couples she was surrounded with had dates and whatnot planned, she came back to Mystic Falls, unable to escape the loneliness.

She would go downstairs and try and communicate with him. Originally, she would just sit down there and talk to him, but Elijah showed her how easy it was to communicate with an Original who was daggered. Their minds were easier to get into, even for a young vampire.

From what I had gathered, she was keeping him updated with her life, talking to him about anything she could think of. There was one conversation she had told me about that had gone exactly how I might expect Caroline to converse. She told him that she couldn't wait for him to wake up, but she was insistent that they weren't going to do anything too hasty. It would all be taken slowly and casually.

I didn't imagine Klaus believed that at all. I certainly didn't. She was anxious, unsure how to handle all of this, but she was embracing the deep rooted feelings that had come from what felt like nowhere. Everything that we had gone through, Caroline and Klaus had been around one another. She had seen the man come out from inside, and she had fallen for him without realizing it. No matter what, she was going to embrace that feeling.

Maybe I should take a page from her book.

Closing the computer, I barely took time to set it on the coffee table in front of me. My lips grabbed onto Kol's, and I used my hands to pin his by his side, to give me leverage to roll myself over on top of him. He came to life beneath me, moving himself closer against me on instinct. Our lips moved with experience, but experience didn't make it any less incredible than it always was. Desire pulsing through me, intimacy and passion igniting me, I could never get enough of this feeling.

Just when his hands moved to the waistline of my shorts, I pulled myself off of him. Getting on my feet was easy enough, but staying there was a bit harder. He didn't like being cut off like that, even for just a moment. Sometimes, he could act like a spoiled child about it all, but his desire to have me was almost never annoying, no matter how spoiled he acted.

He wasn't able to pull me down so easily, not with me awakening the werewolf inside of me, so he gave up the fight. I guess he probably figured that he'd get what he wanted faster if he gave it up because he suddenly stood to his feet, leaning down to grab onto my lips with his own.

I got lost in the feeling of his hand moving to grab onto my face, with him kissing me as if we were running out of time. We literally had forever, but I wasn't alone in the feeling that forever wasn't nearly enough time.

"Since you won't let me have you here, please come upstairs with me, love."

I smiled widely and let my arms fall from around his neck. "I would love to."

His hands went to his side, but one grabbed onto mine on the way. It wasn't that I didn't know where our bedroom was, but he liked taking me there himself sometimes. Or maybe he just liked embracing me in the way that was still fairly new to him, considering he had gone a thousand years without intimate touches like that one.

We barely made it out of the living room and back into the grand entrance hall before someone began knocking on the front door.

Back before all of the supernatural stuff started in our lives, a knock on the door at this hour would've scared the hell out of me, but this was different. It was a different kind of fear as well.

I didn't fear for my life anymore, like I might have then. This was fear for the two children upstairs, but it was brief, just a flash.

Of course someone was knocking. We had a lot of family in town, family that might have just made it back. From the brunette silhouette standing outside, I was comforted. Elena would've knocked.

Thanks to the barrier spell I put around the threshold of the door, ensuring that no one could get in without being invited, she had to knock. I had meant for it to be just like the thing that kept vampires out of the homes of living without being invited it, but it was more. I had to invite people inside every single time. I was the only one who could pass through. Even the twins couldn't get through, and inviting everyone in over and over again was getting annoying.

It was probably due to my out of control magic, but I was gonna get to the bottom of it and fix it. I was sick of inviting people in when it was their home, but I didn't know how to fix it without somehow making it worse.

The closer I got, the more I realized that the person standing outside wasn't Elena. Elena was taller, eye-level with me, but this person was shorter than we were. This was someone else.

I could've thought it through, could've tried to guess at who was on the other side, but that was senseless. I just had to open the door and find out for myself.

I didn't know if I would've come up with the name of the person on the other side, the young vampire I had created without thinking much about it at all.

"Davina?" I could scarcely get the word out, as my breath hitched in my chest. Kol was pulling me away from the door almost the instant he saw her, but one glare sent back his way stopped him. "I can more than handle myself, Kol. She can't get inside anyways."

His eyes tightened, focused on Davina. "What are you doing here?"

There was darkness in her eyes when she looked between the two of us, but one deep breath was all it took to get some of that darkness to subside. "Look, I don't wanna be here. I'd rather be anywhere else, but I've spent weeks trying to find you. Without magic, it's . . . difficult. Can I come inside?"

"Come on in." My curiosity was getting the better of me, even if it might've been considered dangerous to invite her inside. Technically, there wasn't really anything she could do. She was a young vampire in a house full of Originals and, you know, me. She wouldn't make it to the first step.

What did she need? Why was she looking for us?

Davina stuck her foot out first, to test if she was able to get through, and there was obvious surprise splashed across the features of her face when she could. She didn't question it, however, and instead stepped further inside.

I understood the marvel as she looked around her, as she took in the elegant interior of the Mikaelson mansion. The exterior was elaborate, but it didn't quite prepare you for the inside of it all.

Klaus had gone to great lengths to make the home spectacular, and I had almost gotten used to it myself. Still, some days, I couldn't help but wonder if this was the eternity ahead of me, ahead of the twins.

This would be all I knew, and that . . . was the princess life that most only secretly dreamed of.

Fuck, Kol was right. I had become hopelessly spoiled.

It had been a while since I had had a dream about Davina, about what I had done to her. It was easier to face, with the circumstances of it all. She was young, not even eighteen, and I had forced her into a life of vampirism. I had stripped her of her magic and made her into something she probably didn't want to be. Considering the vampires surrounding her, why would I believe that she did?

"Is something wrong?"

"Yes." Davina looked at me now, and the wonder faded, twisted into anger and darkness that only a fiery young spirit like hers might show. "You were in New Orleans for all of a day, and you somehow managed to destroy everything."

"Alright, but to be fair, we weren't going to do anything but make the gold dagger," I reminded her. "You and Marcel forced our hand."

Something about hearing his name took away all the fire, all the fight she had inside of her, and she had to look away, towards her feet. "That's why I'm here. I need your help."

Kol scoffed, and he folded his arms over his chest. "Our help? We're not errand boys."

I held a hand over towards him, to silence his protests. "What's going on, Davina?"

He had to know why I was doing this. It was obvious to everyone that killing the Gemini had gotten to me, no matter the reasoning behind it. Rebekah promised that it would pass, but she couldn't say that because she didn't know. None of the Mikaelsons had ever murdered hundreds, maybe thousands, in one single moment. Their kills had been singular, maybe small groups, but Kol was the only one who had come close, admitting that he once killed over sixty people at a time.

It still didn't even compare, but I imagined she was right, that I would eventually come to terms with it and move on.

No one knew that there was also guilt at what I had done to Davina, no one but Kol. If there was any way to ease my guilt, maybe helping her would do just that. I didn't know what she needed, if we even could help, but if it was a chance to find peace in what I had done to her, I had to take it.

Kol let out a drawn out sigh and rubbed his lips together. "Alright. What do you need?"

The commotion downstairs got the attention of everyone, or at least Rebekah and Elijah. Sutton and Shea were enjoying the privacy spell I put up for them after Sutton had proposed, enjoying one another to the fullest, so I really hoped they didn't decide to come in here. They needed their time, too.

Elijah's eyes were on Davina, and there was emptiness that I had forgotten all about. When Elijah first came to town, he was cryptic, empty, and the biggest mystery. He came at a time when we were first learning about Klaus, and for the first portion of it all, I wasn't allowed near either of them. I was forced to wear a brown contact, to temporarily dye my hair to ensure Elijah never realized I wasn't Elena.

Dyeing my hair only made it obvious because my skin was too pale. He noticed in a moment, but as he had no reason to tell his brother that there were potentially two doppelgängers—he was using one to break the curse so he could kill Klaus, and one was all he needed—so he had given me his word he wouldn't tell. That was the first time I saw any flicker of emotion inside of Elijah, when he gave me his word he wouldn't tell his brother of my existence, stating that I was a breath of fresh air compared to the other doppelgängers. The small differences in me and them made me a relief to him, so much that he didn't want to see his brother kill me or hurt me in any way.

Now . . . it was fun to imagine that he had always sensed there was something important about me, though I doubted that was actually true.

His eyes were empty when they fell to Davina, however, as he made his way to stand near his brother. "I cannot say I expected to see you again."

"It's Marcel." Davina's eyes watered, moving up to stare right at Elijah and Rebekah. "The witches have him, and they're not going to give him to anyone but the Mikaelsons."

"Marcel?" Rebekah asked, but I heard something in a single word, the slightest crack in the pitch of her voice. I had mentioned everything that had happened in New Orleans, and I had seen the flicker of something across her eyes at the mention of Marcel. She shut it down so quickly and refused to mention him again that I had guessed there was some hidden past between Rebekah and Marcel, one that Klaus surely couldn't have enjoyed. "What are you saying?"

Davina rubbed the tears from her eyes and stared back at me, doing her best to appear empty. "When you guys killed me, you took his control of the witches away. They could use magic again without Marcel knowing, and they took control of the city. They were able to capture him, through killing many of the people around him, and New Orleans has become a war zone. The vampires are fighting, and the werewolves, now that Marcel is no longer in charge, are trying to come back to the town. It's become chaotic, and people are dying. Without Marcel, this will never stop."

I took a deep breath. "Okay. What can we do?"

She shook her head and let her eyes dart beside me, to the man who hadn't moved from directly beside me, to the point his arm was touching my own. "The witches won't give him to anyone but the Mikaelsons."

"That's so obviously a trap," Kol snorted.

"Obvious enough that we can evade it."

Kol's eyes were wide when they moved to Elijah, when his brows pulled up on his forehead. "What? Are you mad? You're not seriously considering this, are you?"

"I know that you and Marcellus have never been on good terms, brother, but he is family," Elijah reminded him, and he cleared his throat. "For Niklaus' sake, we have to do this."

Right now, that was probably the only thing Elijah could've said to get Kol to relent. Helping me find peace was one thing, but helping Klaus save someone he cared about . . . we owed that to him.

Arguments could be made that this was his ways of finding redemption for all the things that he had done, that he was paying with his time to ensure his siblings got to live the best eighteen or so years any of them could've hoped for. He was giving all of that peace and happiness up to give it to those he had wronged.

What he had done in the past didn't take away from what he was doing now. If we were going to properly thank him, this was the best way to do that—ensure nothing happened to a man he raised as a son.

Davina clearly wasn't expecting any of this, not Elijah's insistence to help or Kol's submission at the mention of Klaus, and that was odd to me. Marcel had to know what he meant to Klaus at the very least, and whatever past he and Rebekah secretly had would've obviously fueled her to help, right?

Yet Davina was surprised . . . which led me to believe she hadn't actually talked to Marcel about this at all.

What was actually going on here?

"I will go in to retrieve him myself, and if you don't hear from me within a couple days, send the army," Elijah suggested.

Hearing him call the people we had around us, the support we had for all of us and the twins, an army made me laugh, but it wasn't enough to stop me from shaking my head. "You can't do that, Elijah."

His smile widened in my direction, but there was a flash of something more in his eyes, something . . . specific to me alone. "I believe that I can."

If there was one thing I had learned over all the time I had spent with the Mikaelsons, it was how to communicate with them without words being spoken. In certain situations, it might be absolutely necessary, so we had all worked on it.

It's why I knew that Elijah was implying that there was something I could do, to ensure nothing happened to him.

And he was right. There were a million things that I could do.

I hadn't used magic since the barrier spell had gone so haywire, but if it meant protecting Elijah, protecting my family, I would absolutely do that.

Davina looked between Elijah and me, and she struggled to catch a breath. "N-No. That won't work. They didn't say one Mikaelson. They said all of them."

I was suddenly standing in front of Davina, holding onto her shoulders to force her stare into mine. "What are you hiding?"

Her eyes widened a bit in surprise, but there was an absence of dilating pupils. "What? I'm not hiding anything."

With a sigh, I closed my eyes and focused on the spell I had used on Marcel the day that I had turned her, the spell I hadn't had to use since. I didn't want to force Davina into painful submission to do it, but it was the best way to get into her bloodstream, to rip the vervain from her.

From the way she was actually screaming as she sank to her knees, I realized this spell was enhanced, too. It was far more powerful than I intended it to be, so I just worked faster. Ripping the vervain from her system and putting it into my own was enough to stop me in my tracks, to actually catch me off guard.

I hadn't realized until I felt it in me how much she had actually had, but it was a lot, enough that I could barely focus. Davina stood to her feet, however, and she was pissed.

Vervain had proven to be less effective on Original vampires than it was any others, so within a few seconds, my scattered focus was becoming easier to get ahold of. It was becoming easier to stand there and look as if I didn't have vervain in me.

I grabbed onto her shoulders before she could ask what the hell I was doing, before she could ask how that was even possible, and focused on her eyes. "Tell me what's going on."

Watching them dilate, watching her expression clear with focus, was a beautiful sight to see right now, with the pain of the vervain singeing the inside of my veins. "The witches demanded all of the Mikaelsons. They said they would kill him if all eight of you don't show up."

Kol shook his head. "Finn's not coming. He's living his life. He won't come, not for this."

Davina's eyes blurred with tears again, with the realization that everything was out on the table now. "He has to, or they're going to kill Marcel."

"This is more than just a trap, Elijah," Kol disagreed, and he turned to stare at his brother, allow some of his irritation with the situation to show as his eyes hardened. "You see what this is."

"They said eight," Rebekah pointed out, in agreement with Kol. "Officially, there are only five."

That was horrifying to think about, but the witches had said eight Mikaelsons. I was considered a Mikaelson by the Mikaelsons, and Kol and I were engaged. Eventually, we would be married, and I'd officially be a Mikaelson to everyone, but right now, I wasn't.

The witches saw me that way, but that wasn't what I was concerned about. I wasn't that easy to kill.

There were two infant Mikaelsons who were, however.

"No," I whispered, and my breaths grew heavy. "There are seven."

Rebekah paled, the realization suddenly hitting her as well, and she shook her head. "N-No. We absolutely cannot do this! We cannot walk straight into sudden death!"

"Maybe we don't have to." I tried to ignore the tears falling down Davina's face, with the rejection coming from everyone around her now. "Marcel has people. How far are his people willing to go to save him?"

She wiped tears away again, focused on only me, and her brow furrowed. "They would die for him."

"They may have to." I rubbed my hands over my face and took a deep breath. "The witches don't know what I'm capable of. They think I'm a hybrid."

Kol's eyes tightened. "And it needs to remain that way."

"Wait, what are you talking about?" Davina asked, and she began looking between Kol and me. "You're more than a hybrid? What else could you be?"

"Sweetheart, I turned you into a vampire because there were things you couldn't remember. I didn't do it because I wanted to."

I didn't have to look at Rebekah to cast an illusion spell over her, to make her appear like Davina. Davina, horrified as she stared at the perfect illusion of herself standing next to her, started looking around, but illusion spells had become easy, especially with all of this out of control magic.

By the time her eyes found Kol and Elijah, they appeared as her as well, and she couldn't stop turning between the three, looking for someone besides herself but only finding me.

She was breathless, but she focused on the only person who didn't appear like her. "What are you doing?"

"Illusion spells. They're quite handy." All it took was waving my hand out in front of me to remove them, to bring everyone back to the faces that I knew and loved. "Easy to do, easy to keep up from a distance."

Elijah was the only one who seemed intrigued. Kol was furious at the wild notion I was even considering, and Rebekah was just distraught. It was very clear that whatever had gone on between her and Marcel wasn't some fling, like what had gone on with her and Matt. This was very real, something eternal even, and the idea of losing him was getting to her.

She wouldn't sacrifice the twins for him, however.

"What are you thinking, Darcy?" Elijah asked, and he shifted his focus away from the frightened Davina and over to me.

"There is no way in hell we would bring them face-to-face with the witches," I said. "They need to see us all in New Orleans. I won't ask Finn to come, but he doesn't have to. If he's seen in New Orleans, that's all that matters."

Elijah frowned. "How are the illusions of us meant to confront them? They wouldn't know the first thing about speaking like us, about protecting themselves the way we would."

"It doesn't have to be believable for long. It just has to distract them so we can get in there and get Marcel out from wherever they're holding him." I focused back on Davina for a moment. "Can you get us to him?"

She nodded. "I can."

"Good." I hated having to use compulsion, but it had become absolutely necessary, for the safety of everyone. It had been the reason I turned her to begin with, so I could compel her. "Don't say a word to anyone about any of this. Don't tell anyone about my magic, and don't tell anyone about our plan."

Something I hadn't even thought about before occurred to me, not until I started to let her go. Davina was clearly gonna have to help us do this, and if she was helping us . . . with two eleven-month-old children, who were learning to walk and move around on their own, we couldn't just lock them away. Even if we could, she could hear them.

I grabbed her attention once more. "Oh, one more thing. We have twins. You can't tell anyone about them either, and any time you're away from us, I don't want you to even remember them."

Her eyes rounded. "What?"

This was the first time Kol had been directly angry at me in a long time, and it was such a cute attempt at angry that I struggled not to laugh—I didn't want to piss him off anymore, after all. I watched him struggle to glare, watched him struggle to focus on the thing he hated feeling in my direction, but he just couldn't hold onto it.

He eventually gave up and just sighed. "Okay, why was that bit necessary?"

I shrugged. "Well, if she's helping us, she's gonna see them, and quite frankly, I don't need to keep putting vervain in my system, especially when we get to New Orleans. If she sees the twins then and she's not already compelled, then I have to compel her again."

Rebekah was able to pull herself out of the pain inside of her mind, the fear of the uncertainty around us. She was able to focus on some piece of light, something good—good enough that she actually smiled over at me. "Look at you, doing quite well at this surviving thing."

I imagined my smile was as bright as I felt on the inside, as the first Mikaelson to directly tell me that I was surviving well, but I let my gaze wander between the three around me—between Rebekah, Elijah, and Kol the longest.

"What can I say? I learned from the best."

So here it is, the beginning of the end. Maybe? I mean, part 4 is still up in the air, with the length of the outline continuing to grow with so much still left to do. I hope to not carry it on too much, but I also don't wanna leave anything undone.

We'll see how it goes, but for now, let's focus on Spell It Out.

I've gotten through chapter 10 written, and I hope to work on at least 11 tomorrow. I'm trying to stay far enough ahead that I have some leeway in case something comes up, or I get stuck. Just to keep this story going.

Let me know what you guys think! I'm trying to keep the story compelling, so let me know if it gets too dry.

Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)