Salvation of a Salvatore Sister

An Offer of Humanity

When I wake, I'm no longer in the compound, but somewhere unfamiliar. I rub my neck as I try to gauge my surroundings. A groan to my left draws my attention to a body in the corner, a body I know. "Hayley." I crawl across the floor to her, taking her head into my lap. "Hayley, can you hear me? Are you okay?" Moving her hair out of the way, I notice a gash across her forehead. "Oh god, Hayley, what happened?" I whisper.

At the sound of my voice, Hayley blinks, conscious for only a moment to say two words. "Behind you." A gasp falls from my lips as I turn around to find a woman with brown skin and dark hair behind a table across the room. Placing Hayley carefully onto the ground, I stand, noticing that my other shoe is missing, leaving me barefoot. "Who are you?" I ask the woman. "What do you want?"

My phone rings from inside the side of my bra. The woman nods her head encouragingly. "Go ahead. You can answer it." And I do, speaking before Klaus can ask. "I'm in a witch's shop, I think it's Lenore's, Marcel's witch. Hayley is here, but-" my words cut off as the woman, the witch I am presuming is Lenore, lashes out with magic to make my phone die in my hand.

"That'll be enough," she says. I shove my phone back in my bra as I stare at the woman. When my gaze sees a branding mark in her hand, I put it all together.

"Esther," I whisper. She left Cassie's body to jump to Lenore's, but for what reason, I am unsure. "You know your sons will come for us," I tell her, moving to stand protectively in front of Hayley's vulnerable body.

Esther smiles at me. "My sweet Liliana, that's been the idea all along." Her smile deepens as she takes a step closer to me from behind the table, Lenore's soul-branding spell still laid upon it. "It's so lovely that we have a chance to talk, just us. Tell me, do my sons ever acknowledge the good you bring into their lives?"

"What is this, Esther? What do you want? What did you do to Hayley?"

"Hayley was an accident. I'm afraid I did not know what this body could do yet."

I scoff at her words. "There you go once again about no violence, yet you are the only one to shed blood here tonight."

Esther ignores my words as she looks over the things on Lenore's table. When she notices the starling necklace she made for Klaus on the table, she picks it up, rubbing her hands over the pendent. "It's a terrible thing, for a mother to fail her child." I tense at her words. She looks up at me. "As yours did."

"What do you know about my mother?" I spit at her, confused and conflicted. The mere mention of my mother leaves the well of tangled feelings I thought I'd buried years ago to ebb into mind.

"More than you, I imagine. Lillian Salvatore never loved you as you wished her to, did she?"

"I don't need you to pity me, Esther."

"Oh, but I do, Liliana." She takes another step towards me, setting the starling necklace down. "A mother should love her children fiercely and passionately, but Lillian never did with you. Instead, she forsake you and allowed your father to brand you with her name and offered none of her love." I bite the inside of my cheek as Esther's words hit hard. My mother is someone I try not to think about. For my mother never loved me as a mother should have, not as she loved Stefan and Damon, and for having the strong essence of her name burned into the makings of my life, all she gave me in return was a cold impassiveness. Only once can I remember my mother wiping my tears and running her hands through my hair, telling me it would be okay after I fell in the front garden when I was four. And that was the last time she ever did something like that. "Lillian failed you. She didn't protect you from the horrors of this world."