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Partum Asunder	By : SiioerSecret Category: M through R > The Originals Views: 5569 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I own no part of the The Originals or its characters. No money is being made from this story.

Chapter List
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Author's Note: If you’ll bear with me, this first installment is mostly background and setup for the main scenario. If you are a fan of the show, these initial events are concurrent with episode 3x09, Savior. The only significant initial change to the show’s original events is the recurrence of the curse mark on Rebekah’s arm.
In reviewing everything that had happened to her in recent memory, it was hard for Rebekah to say how she felt in this exact moment. On the one hand, it was Christmas, and she was spending it with her family. On the other, the tragedy of her long existence seemed poised to continue.
Mere days ago, she had been lying immobile at the bottom of the ocean with a stake in her heart. Unlike the familiar, dreamless sleep of the silver daggers she had known in the past, this stake had borne a particularly nasty curse. She had felt every excruciating moment of those long months underwater: the aching cold, suffocating darkness, and burn of her veins crying out for blood. Yet for all the pain and suffering, the worst part of it had been being trapped down there with only her own inescapable sorrow as company.
In the first millennium of Rebekah’s life, there had never been a vampire pregnancy. Now, in the space of as many years, there had been two.
When Rebekah’s bastard brother Klaus unlocked his full hybrid potential, he had spent a single fateful night with a royal-blooded werewolf, Hayley. Their coupling had produced a miracle. Klaus had received the great honor of being the first vampire to conceive of a living, breathing child. They named her Hope.
Scarcely a year after the miracle of Hope’s conception, the wedding of Jo Laughlin and Alaric Saltzman turned from a day of hope and celebration into a massacre at the hands of Jo’s bloodthirsty and vengeful twin brother. The Gemini witch coven, of which Jo was a member, used their dying breaths to preserve the coven’s lineage by placing Jo’s unborn twin babies into the womb of the nearest guaranteed wedding survivor: Caroline Forbes.
Caroline, who had been a vampire for not even half a decade and could not know the despair of Rebekah’s centuries-long yearning, had received that which Rebekah most desired in the world. While Rebekah did not envy the tragic circumstances that gifted Caroline that miracle, she could not help but feel an indelible sense of loss for something which had never been hers in the first place.
“I almost wish you hadn’t told me,” Rebekah said at last.
She and her brother Elijah stood beside the flickering flames of the fire pit. It was their family tradition to write down their wishes and cast them into the yuletide flames for luck. They had more family this year than years previous, but Rebekah did not feel any luckier.
Moments ago, their brother Klaus had informed Rebekah that, since their enemies believed her to be on the bottom of the ocean, it would be best for her to leave New Orleans and hide where their enemies would never find her. Rebekah had agreed. Then Klaus had gone inside to join his darling daughter and Elijah had disclosed the news of Caroline’s safe delivery of twins.
“I didn’t tell you to be cruel,” said Elijah. He, more than anyone, understood the conflict she felt. In their many centuries together, he had seen the way she looked at mothers and children, the way her eyes always drew towards pregnant women, and had observed her bury her jealousy at Hayley’s pregnancy beneath the bittersweet and overwhelming joy she felt for the existence of Hope, whom she loved as dearly as her own child. He knew her heartrending mixture of joy and sadness, because he felt it, too.
Over the course of the past millennium, Elijah and Rebekah had sired many vampires, but no amount of bloodthirsty undead progeny could sate their enduring urge to experience something more. Something truer, something natural. Their mother had taken the opportunity from them when she turned them into the original vampires.
Their desire for this human experience had been their shared suffering for centuries. It seemed unique to them among their siblings. While the others occasionally dabbled at the experience of parenthood, adopting or fostering humans for brief periods of time, they did not seem to share Elijah and Rebekah’s obsession for the real thing. In fact, when Klaus had been presented with the mantle of true fatherhood, he had risen to the occasion only reluctantly, after Elijah cajoled him into it.
Elijah had not required any cajoling to embrace the unborn baby. He wanted Hope from the moment he set eyes on Hayley. Outwardly, he presented his interest as the pure and honest concern of an uncle who wished for nothing more than to protect his only familial heir, but inwardly, it was a different story. The knowledge that her child bore his blood, even if not his blood directly, had enthralled him completely, his parental desire overriding every other thought and instinct in him. He had been drawn to Hayley as surely as a stone to the depths.
She was more than her pregnancy, of course. In Hayley, he discovered a woman of amazing strength and determination, every bit his equal. She was brave, dedicated, and passionate -- not to mention breathtakingly beautiful -- yet it was doubtful he would have ever noticed any of her stunning qualities had she not been pregnant.
Hayley was perceptive enough to realize Elijah’s interest in her stemmed from her condition. She suspected Elijah loved her pregnancy more than he loved her, which was a large part of why, after Hope was born, she spurned Elijah in favor of building a life with fellow werewolf Jackson, making excuses that hurt for Elijah to hear as much as they hurt for her to say. He suffered through it because he loved her, whether he was with her or not, and loving her and Hope gave him a completion to his life that had been hitherto impossible.
Now, as Hayley, Hope, and Jackson enjoyed the food and laughter and merriment surrounding the Christmas tree inside, Elijah merely wished that his sister could feel the same sense of satisfaction and purpose he had found through his firsthand experience of Hayley’s pregnancy. He wanted it for her almost as much as he wanted Hayley for himself.
Which was why he felt it necessary to tell Rebekah about Caroline.
Rebekah brushed a tear from her eye. “Is it never me?” she asked, voice a pale whisper in the smoky air.
A footstep drew Rebekah’s attention. Freya, returning to the maudlin scene of the bonfire from the warmth and merriment inside, smiled at Rebekah. “Have you told her yet?”
“I was waiting for you,” said Elijah.
Rebekah’s eyes flitted between the two of them in curious anticipation. “What? What is it?”
Freya drew close to the warmth of the fire. “I’ve studied the spell the Gemini coven used to implant the twins in a new mother.” She had watched and rewatched that awful, blood-soaked recording over and over, marveling at the magical perversion of nature and everything it had entailed. “It took every ounce of strength the entire coven had.”
Rebekah breathed ever so slightly, containing her disappointment to the tiniest of whimpered inhalations.
“But they didn’t have access to an original vampire,” said Freya.
Rebekah could scarce believe it. Surely Freya didn’t mean to suggest they could cast the spell on Rebekah? The smile on Freya’s face seemed to mean exactly that. Some part of Rebekah was waiting for the other shoe to drop, but there was no other shoe, only Elijah and Freya’s encouraging and confident smiles. “Are you saying I could-- I could have a baby?” Tears welled in Rebekah’s eyes as her shock gave way to elation. She skirted the fire pit and embraced Freya. “Oh, sister, you cannot know what this means to me!”
Freya did know, but her own tragic history with childbearing was not something she wished to foist upon Rebekah during this moment of profound joy. “There is one condition,” Freya said carefully. “The baby must not be a Mikaelson by blood.”
Rebekah was entirely unbothered by that. “But a baby? Mine to have and to carry?” Freya nodded, and Rebekah spun Freya around with elation and laughed with delight.
Freya had enough presence of mind to blush at this outpouring of gratitude. “It was all Elijah’s doing,” she admitted. He had been the one to realize the spell’s potential, secure a copy of the wedding recording, and bring the idea to Freya while Rebekah lay trapped beneath the waves.
Rebekah released Freya and looked to her brother. She could sense the joy he felt for her, despite the care he took to hide it beneath his stoic exterior. “Thank you, Elijah,” she said, hugging him more sedately but just as gratefully.
“Of course,” he replied, returning her embrace. “Merry Christmas.”
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