Back To You | Rebekah Mikaelson

Chapter One

"When you said you'd be bringing me back to life I thought I would actually- Oh, I don't know, be in my own bloody body?" Ingrid exclaimed as she sat at a table with Esther, who was currently in the body of one of the Harvest girls.

"Why would you want that body when this one can give you everything you never had? A family, a human life," the Original Witch answered, not even bothering to spare Ingrid a glance.

"I already have a family and I never wanted a human life, so long as I had Rebekah."

"Your family died a thousand years ago, you just leeched yourself onto this one," Esther spoke through gritted teeth, her hands clenching at her sides. "A thousand years is too long for someone, anyone to live."

"You made us like this! You are the one who created the 'things' you hate so much."

"And now I am here to fix my mistakes."

"You really think they'll listen to you? You tried to kill them, you are their mother and you tried to kill them!" Ingrid yelled as she stood up, her chair clattering to the ground behind her.

"Now I am here to give them a second chance at life, to have a new hope."

Ingrid's hands balled into fists and she wanted nothing more than to rip the woman in front of her's heart out. She remembered what happened, she remembered everything because she never left Rebekah's side. She remembered seeing the little infant on an altar, a knife over her heart because of an order Esther herself had given. She remembered Nik screaming as he watched Hayley die and the witches take away his daughter. She remembered the looks on the faces of her family, Katherine knowing what it was like to have a daughter ripped from her arms. She also remembered Nik handing Rebekah his child and telling her to hide, not without dubbing her their family's Hope. But she would never tell Esther about that moment.

"You are the reason Hope is dead! You ordered a baby to be killed! Just like you gave your own up to be killed," Ingrid said, knowing how much mentioning Esther's firstborn would hurt her.

"Don't you dare mention her!" the witch yelled, her anger finally exploding to the surface as she stood up. "I made a deal and I had to follow through with it."

"You are a horrible mother."

Ingrid gasped when she felt a sharp pain across her cheek, her hand reaching up at grasp at it in pain. The slap carried more pain than she was used to due to her now mortal body, the rings on Esther's fingers having sliced the skin.

"Go. Now," the Original Witch ordered, turning away while flexing her hand.

As if she wanted Ingrid to believe that her strike had hurt her just as much.

Ingrid glared at Esther's back before marching out of the door and heading toward the French Quarter. If she wanted to keep her plan on track, she had to do all she could to resist the urge to rip the other woman's head off of her shoulders.

Not that she could, Esther had smartly put Ingrid in the body of the absolute weakest witch she could find...

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Ingrid was calming herself down at the bar in Rousseau's when someone sat down beside her, causing her to almost drop her drink when the very familiar voice began to talk.

"Are you okay?" came the voice of none other than Katherine Pierce, Ingrid willing herself to school her expression into one of indifference as she turned toward the doppelgänger.

"What?" she asked, raising her eyebrow when all she really wanted to do was hug her friend.

"It's kind of hard to miss... that," Katherine explained, pointing a finger to the side of Ingrid's face. "Who did it?"

Ingrid smiled to herself, knowing that the woman in front of her may act like she doesn't have a care in the world for those around her but in actuality cares a lot more than she lets on. Katherine had never been able to look past any form of abuse in her life, always feeling the need to step in as some sort of savior.

"I'm fine, just said a few things I shouldn't have."

"Boyfriend?"

"Close, girlfriend's mother. What about you? You have a defeated air about you," Ingrid asked while taking a sip from her glass, noticing how upset her friend looked.

"I got into a fight with my boyfriend," Katherine admitted, taking a long sip of her own drink as she did. "I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"I've been told I have that kind of personality. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone," the witch said, smiling over at the doppelgänger. "Wanna talk about it?"

"You know what? Sure."

With that, for the first time in a long time, the two friends just sat down and talked. Even though one of them didn't know who exactly the other was. Regardless, the two of them laughed and talked for hours that to them seemed like only minutes, but their conversation was rudely interrupted by Katherine's phone ringing.

"It's Elijah," she told the brunette next to her, smiling fondly down at her phone despite the ranting she'd just done about the man.

"Go, he probably wants to apologize," Ingrid encouraged, pushing the woman gently toward the door.

"Before I go, I don't think I caught your name?"

"It's... Freya," the witch answered, using the name as both a tribute to her old friend and as a way to upset Esther. "My name is Freya."

"Well- Thank you, Freya. I hope we see each other again, this was actually kind of fun," Katherine said as she backed toward the exit, looking surprised by her own words.

"It was. Goodbye, Katherine."

As the doppelgänger left, she paused briefly in the door. She glanced back at 'Freya' with narrowed eyes as the woman stayed seated, sipping her drink calmly. Meanwhile the vampire was anything but calm...

Katherine had never told the woman her name.