Hello, my lovelies. Here is my newest story. I hope you will enjoy it.

I have been planing this for a while now and finished this chapter a few minutes ago, actually. For those who have read my other stories, I will try updating 'Metempsychosis' and 'The Travelers Future' soon. The next chapter of 'Until We Go Down' will be ready soon.

If you haven't read those yet, you should try them out.

Anyway, I am not sure when I will be able to update this story again. I will try to do so soon.

Warning: The rating of this story might be changed in the future. If any of you hope for some kind of epic love story or something this is not the right place to search for it. There will be love, but it wont be the main focus of the story.

Summary: In the middle of winter, just minutes after my twin sister, I was reborn into a world I knew everything about and into a family I would fail to safe. Self-Insert/OC-Insert as Freya's twin.

The Hanging Tree

Chapter 1

Prologue

.

.

.

How The Mighty Fall

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again."
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.'' ― Winston S. Churchill

My end started with small blue spots on my skin. They appeared in random places and mostly after my volleyball lessons.

I did not think much about them. They were insignificant in comparison to my approaching exams. So insignificant in fact that I soon forgot about them.

A mistake I would never make again.

The second clue of there being something wrong with me were the nose bleeds. I blamed stress and a high blood pressure for them.

Not even once did I think about going to a doctor.

When I finally fainted in the middle of my chemistry class and my mom forced me to go to the hospital, it was already too late.

Acute myeloid leukemia

The chances of me being cured were low from the beginning on. I was dead the moment Doctor Miller gave me my prognosis.

Sadly, I had been underaged, thus my mom choose the next course of action. Chemotherapy.

One of the biggest mistakes we ever made.

Before I even knew what was happening, I couldn't recognize my own body anymore. The beautiful auburn hair on my head was gone, my skin almost translucent and playing my favorite sport was not an option anymore. The few steps to my bathroom became one of the biggest challenges I had ever had to withstand.

I couldn't even eat the cookies my grandma made. Everything had lost its taste.

However, if I had to decide which of the side effects was the worst, I could say without a doubt it was the Typhilitys.

Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, a distended abdomen, fever chills, fever, abdominal pain and tenderness. Those were all the symptoms. The nurses called my condition a medical emergency.

A few hours after I was told the diagnosis my heart stopped beating.

I died in pain, resenting my mother for the choices she had made. Irrational it might have been, but nothing could have changed what I felt at that moment. Not even the high dose of painkillers I had been given.

I died a month before my seventeenth birthday, welcoming death's embrace with open arms.

The heartbeat of a person. The presence and touch of another.

Those three things kept me sane for eight and a half months. They accompanied me in the darkness and through the development that took place in the following months.

Hearing, sight and touch.

One after another those senses developed and colored my previously bleak existence.

I did not know where I was. Sometimes, I was not even truly aware of the fact that I still existed.

I knew that I had died.

But somehow, the universe had decided to use me in one of its biggest jokes.

I was still here. I was still alive.

It took me some time to realize what happened. For this new body, my mind and soul were still too developed. It was not strong enough to allow me thinking about the workings of the universe and other bullshit like that.

Thus I stayed unconscious most of the time. The only things that kept me aware of the fact that I was still there, wherever 'there' actually was I had no idea, were the constant and calm heartbeat and the sporadic touch of another person.

They became my lifelines.

That is until the day that my new dull existence was shattered with the disappearance of the presence besides me. I did not notice it immediately. There were other things I had to worry about.

Like the space around us trying to squeeze the two of us together. I had never been claustrophobic, but that experience made me reconsider that notion.

When the presence―no the person with whom I had shared my home? Prison? Afterlife?― had suddenly disappeared and I once again had enough space to move and think properly for a second, I felt relieved.

That relief only lasted till I realized that I was alone.

The companion at whose side I had been living for what seemed like an eternity was gone and I was utterly alone in a place I knew nothing about.

Fortunately or unfortunately, it's a matter of perspective, I followed soon after her.

At that time I hadn't known what was going on. Only that someone had taken the only familiar thing I had from me and was now trying to take me as well.

Fighting against it was pointless and later I would consider myself lucky at the fact that I hadn't had the power to even try.

In the middle of winter, just minutes after my twin sister, I was reborn into a world I knew everything about and into a family I would fail to safe.

Eira. That's the name my new parents gave me. Right after finding a name for my twin.

Freya Mikaelson.