A/N: Welcome back, everybody! Thank you so much for your patience with my slower update schedule lately, and a huge thanks as well for all the great feedback I've gotten so far! I'm glad that so many people are still excited for this story!

In any case, this chapter ended up being both longer than originally planned and not at all what I initially had in mind? I mean, it's not unusual for the characters in my stories to take the reins and lead events in directions I didn't anticipate, but normally not so soon, lol. XD But as it stands now, this chapter is half Davina going to school, and half Kol waking up in Kaleb's body. So, hooray for Kol making his debut into the story! I'm so excited! But I do also feel obligated to mention that I struggled a bit with this chapter for some reason, so if bits of it don't seem to flow right, that's probably why. XD

Chapter 2

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."

"Alright," Marcel said as they pulled up to the drop-off zone of Isidore Newman School. "Here we are." He twisted around in the driver's seat to look at her more directly. "Have a good day in class, D. And don't forget, you have a session with Cami this evening, okay?"

Davina's felt her smile falter at the reminder. She knew that her talks with Cami were important, knew logically that talking about the events of a year ago and working through her feelings about all of it was helping her...but on some days it just felt painful and lonely, reliving those old horrors. "Is that today?" she asked quietly. "I'd forgotten all about it."

Marcel gave a gusty sigh and reached over to squeeze her shoulder gently. "I know it's hard on you," he said comfortingly. "But it's for your own good, Davina, you know that."

She almost opened her mouth to shoot back that her death had supposedly been for her own good, too, but she bit down on the words before they could escape; if she said that it would just hurt her and hurt Marcel, and they'd both been hurt enough already.

So instead she just nodded and forced a smile back onto her face. "Same meeting place as before, right? Her uncle's church?" Davina didn't know why, but she still found the place oddly comforting and preferred doing her therapy sessions there rather than at the Abattoir or some rented office space; although some might consider her time hiding there as being not much better than being held prisoner, to Davina that church still meant safety, still reminded her that Marcel cared about her enough to fight a war on multiple fronts to protect her.

She often needed that sort of reminder, whenever she spoke to Cami about the events of the Harvest and everything that had come after, up to and including her own death at the hands of a possessed Shadow Coven witch who'd been working for the Storme twins' insane immortal uncle.

But that's all over now, she told herself firmly, shaking her head and forcing herself to focus on the here and now. I'm not dead anymore, the Ancestors aren't trying to hurt me, I'm alive and moving forward with my life. Everything's fine. It's all over and finished.

"Yeah," Marcel was saying as she tuned back in to the present world. "St. Anne's, seven o'clock tonight. Do you want me to come pick you up after, or will you be getting a ride from Cami, or...?"

"Uh, no, that's okay," she said. "I'll walk back to the compound on my own, if that's alright. We're going to be talking about the time I was...the time I spent with the Ancestors," she said, voice cracking only a little. "I think...I think I'll need to be by myself for a little while after that."

Marcel looked an awful lot like someone had just carved out a chunk of his heart and stepped on it, but he visibly swallowed down his pain and grief and nodded. "Okay," he answered, and if his voice was a little choked up too, well, Davina wasn't going to point it out. "Okay, but you be careful, alright? If you get any weird feelings or see anyone who looks suspicious, make sure that you-"

"Call you right away and get to somewhere safe where lots of people can see me," she repeated dutifully, the words rolling off her tongue with well-practiced ease. "You don't need to worry so much, Marcel," she added. "I can take care of myself."

Marcel just gave her a strained smile and pulled her into a loose hug before releasing her and hitting a button to unlock the car doors. "I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but being your guardian means that it's my job to worry about you. Always, for the rest of our lives."

Davina slipped out of the car and leaned down to talk through the rolled down window. "I know," she assured him with a smile. "It's a job you're really good at, you know? And I am grateful, Marcel. I wouldn't even be alive now if it weren't for you." Someone farther behind in the drop-off queue honked their horn and she rolled her eyes. "Okay, we're holding up traffic so I've got to go. See you later?"

"Absolutely," Marcel promised, and then pulled away from the curb.

She stood there until his car vanished from view and then turned and started walking across campus to her first class, Global Studies with a focus on Latin America.

She slid into her seat a few minutes before the bell rang, and started pulling her notebooks out of her bag.

The guy sitting next to her on the right leaned over and flashed her a friendly smile. "Hey, Davina. How was your weekend?"

She smiled back. "Hi, Mark. It was okay," she answered. "Hung out at home, studied. You know, the usual. How about you?"

He nodded. "Pretty much the same. I originally had plans to go to a soccer game with my dad," he tacked on with an unhappy look, "but he ended up having to work at the precinct all through the weekend so that fell through."

Davina frowned, vaguely recalling that Mark's dad was some sort of detective. "How come he had to work the whole weekend? That's unusual, isn't it?"

Mark gave a shrug. "A little, I guess? All I know is that it's something to do with those new disappearances."

Davina's heart tripped in her chest. "Disappearances? What disappearances? Who's gone missing?"

"You haven't heard about it yet?" The girl in the seat in front of Davina twisted around with wide eyes. "Eight people have vanished in the last two weeks. No one knows what happened to them. The police are starting to suspect foul play."

"Who were they?" Davina asked, increasingly anxious even though she couldn't pinpoint an exact reason for it. "Anyone we knew?"

The girl, Bethany, shook her head, her bleached hair fluttering at the motion. "Nah, no one our age. From what I read in the paper, the ones who went missing weren't important or anything; no rich relations or anything to make them stand out in any way. Just average people."

"Everyone's important to someone," Mark interrupted. "Just because they were normal people doesn't mean they won't be missed."

Bethany chewed on her lower lip, looking remorseful. "Y-yeah," she agreed. "You know I didn't mean it like that, Mark, seriously. I just..look, those missing people weren't very social, you know? My mom said that they were all pretty reclusive, just kept their heads down and kept to themselves."

"So why would anyone even want to kidnap them in the first place," Davina finished for her, then swallowed hard because all this talk of abductions was bringing back some nasty memories, of blood and pain and magic and stumbling through the dark with desperation in her heart.

She shook her head and very deliberately flipped open her Global Studies notebook to review the most recent homework assignment. "Did anyone else do the extra credit questions on Paraguay?" she asked out loud, very pointedly changing the subject to something that wouldn't tip her into a PTSD fit in the middle of a classroom. "Because I wasn't quite clear on the events of the Chaco War after the 1933 ceasefire expired, and I wanted to see what someone else thought."

Bethany looked startled by the shift in topic but quickly pulled out her own binder. "Well, by the time the truce ended, Bolivia had rebuilt their army, right? But that Paraguayan general-"

"Hey, Davina, do you think your guardian knows anything about those disappearances?" Another boy on Mark's other side leaned forward to look at her as he spoke, interrupting Bethany as he did so. "He's friends with the town council or something, right?"

Davina fumbled with her pencil and nearly dropped it. "Er, something like that," she replied, because she could hardly say 'Well, he's actually a founding member of the Council of Twelve that governs the supernatural side of the city'. "I don't think Marcel knows anything about those missing people, though," she added. "He's been busy with his own work lately, and hasn't mentioned anything about it me." And he definitely would have let her know about it, if it had been brought it his attention.

Mark made an unhappy sound. "My dad says that the city leaders aren't taking the disappearances seriously; that's probably why Marcel hasn't heard anything about it yet." His expression brightened suddenly. "Hey, maybe you can ask him about it?" he asked Davina eagerly. "He's an important guy in New Orleans, right? If he starts talking to people about the disappearances or looking into it himself, then the city might take the cases more seriously and give my dad and the other detectives on it more funding and resources."

"I don't know," Davina said uncertainly. "I mean, I can mention it to him, but I don't know how much he could do to help." If it was just ordinary humans attacking other humans, it was technically out of the Council's jurisdiction; Marcel could lean on a few people to work harder on the case, but that was about it.

"Jut ask him about it, okay?" Mark looked at her plaintively. "Please?"

Davina rolled her eyes. "I'll see what I can do," she told him. "Now seriously, did you do the section on the Chaco War or not, because I could use a different perspective on these questions."

Darkness. That's all Kol had known, all he had seen since his death. There were echoes in the darkness, echoes of pain and loneliness and betrayal, and nothing should have been able hurt him, not here in the darkness (not when he was already dead), but those remnants somehow did.

He can remember the pain of dying, of that hateful stake piercing his chest, of the agonizing flames that had swept across his skin and through his entire body.

He can remember, in a vague and disjointed manner, how he'd felt so furious, so enraged, so...betrayed.

His siblings had been in on it, he'd been sure of it. Still was sure of it, even now. Because even if they hadn't directly murdered him, they'd been complicit in the situation that had led to his death and that was just as bad, just as much a betrayal.

For all their promises of family forever and always, it was painfully laughable how quickly they'd always turned on each other. How quickly they'd always turned on him.

And they always had. Admittedly he'd been chaotic and bloodthirsty, perhaps reveling in it more than he ought to have, but the rest of them had hardly been much better, and yet somehow he'd always been the odd man out, the bad one.

They'd always judged him and cast him aside and turned on him at the slightest provocation.

It was all he'd been able to think about, during all this time in the darkness.

Now, though...now something was changing.

The darkness was...shifting. No, that's wasn't right. It was parting, like the water around the bow of a ship, and he was being tugged through it. To what or where he didn't know. He couldn't even fathom what could be pulling him through this darkness; he was dead, and very little could reach the afterlife and have any significant sort of impact.

Suddenly, he felt a distantly familiar magic wrap around him, cocooning him from the darkness and filling him with a peculiar feeling of warmth, his whole being prickling and tingling, like when a too-cold limb is warmed too quickly.

What's happening? he wondered, because he could recognize the feel of the magic around him but the familiarity of it was categorically impossible. Because she's just as dead as he is, and has been for years. What is this-

Before he could even finish framing his next thought, there was a sharp pull, and then it felt like he was on fire all over again, and being pulled in every direction all at once. Like someone was ripping apart his essence and soul and trying to work it into a vision of their own.

He's not sure how long it lasted, but after a time he felt himself, his soul or life force or whatever one might call it, being pulled at again, only this time he's not being dragged out of the darkness or twisted around.

This time he was being put into something else.

No, not something...into someone else, and the idea was alarming to say the very least. Not only was it nigh-impossible magic, it was forbidden by almost every magical sect on the planet. Who would be so powerful and so bold as to even attempt it?

And who the bloody hell would use such magic on him specifically?

Before he could start compiling a list of who might be responsible (because there was no way that it was her, it just couldn't be), there was a moment of sharp and biting cold, and he lost awareness for several moments, just...drifting in nothingness yet again. But then he was...back.

Back in more ways than one, he realized as he opens his eyes and was met with the sight of a young short-haired woman standing above him. A witch presumably, because he could feel the power thrumming in the air around her, could practically taste it as it flowed around them.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," she said, and her voice was foreign and unfamiliar but the way she said it, the cadence of her words, the tone...it's uncannily familiar, but he's so disoriented he couldn't place who she reminds him of.

Of more immediate concern, however, is the fact that...

He was...alive?

No, I can't be. It wasn't possible. And yet...

He blinked, and his vision cleared a bit, the blurriness from his sudden awakening going away gradually.

He took a deep breath, felt the inhale of air expand his lungs and ribs and then whoosh out as he exhaled shakily.

He sat up instinctively, innately uncomfortable just laying there with a strange witch leaning over him, then lifted up his hands and-

Blanched, because those were not his hands, thank you very much.

He stared down at fingers he did not recognize, and then carefully raised those fingers up to trace the features of his face.

He felt his nose, his lips, the line of his jaw...he went over his whole face, bit by bit.

It was nothing like the one he remembered, the one he's had for his entire life.

It's not his face, which means...

This body was not his.

"What is this?" he demanded of the witch, hating the way his voice sounded when it came out of his new throat. Not just that it shook and cracked, but the way that it wasn't his voice. Even the accent was different, and he didn't even know what to think of any of this, of being dragged from death and put into someone else's body. "Who are you, and what am I doing here?"

"Oh, my sweet son," the witch said, stepping forward to cup his face in her hands. "Don't be frightened; you're safe here with me, I promise."

He leaned back and away from her, lips curling in an instinctive snarl. "I'm only going to ask once more before I get nasty," he snapped. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

She tsked at him, looking vaguely disappointed. "Come now, Kol, don't you recognize your own mother?"

He was so startled by this proclamation that he instinctively leapt to his feet, only to collapse to the ground almost immediately because apparently his new body wasn't ready for that sort of fast movement. "What-" He swallowed hard, heart pounding in his chest as he struggled to find words. "What's happening," is what he finally managed, his voice rough and hoarse.

"I've brought you back," his mother said, her new face creasing in a smile as she knelt down beside him and tugged him back up onto the stone bench he'd bolted off of. "I couldn't just leave one of my sons dead and forgotten, could I? What sort of mother would I be if I did that?"

He just stared at her uncertainly, torn between hope and suspicion. Because as much as he would have liked to believe that her motives were as stated, he just couldn't trust in that. He'd been floating in the cold darkness of the afterlife for years, after all; why revive him now, if not for some reason of her own? And for that matter, how was she even here? She'd been dead for much, much longer than him, after all.

"What do you want?" he asked, shifting away from her touch. "And what..." He lifted a hand and pressed it into his chest, feeling the beat of his borrowed heart. "What did you do? How is this-" He choked on the word 'possible' and instead settled for another strident, "How?"

"A soul transference spell," she replied, giving a small self-satisfied smile. "It worked so well for me," she went on, indicating her own new body, "that I had hoped to duplicate the effects for you as well. And your brother Finn," she added almost absentmindedly. "The spellwork was complicated, as was acquiring bodies for the both of you, but the results speak for themselves."

"Finn's back as well?" Kol asked. "Where is he?"

"Not here," Esther said, waving a hand dismissively as if the subject was of little importance for the moment. "He's running an errand for me at the moment, but I'll be sure to tell him of your revival at the earliest opportunity."

Kol nodded automatically, before his mind circled back around to one of her earlier remarks. "How precisely," he asked, "did you acquire these bodies?"

She looked surprised by the question for a moment, like it wasn't one she'd expected from him, but then her expression smoothed out into something unreadable. "Does something like that truly matter, my son? You are alive again, and that is all that matters. And we're even in the city of New Orleans, no less! It's always been one of your favorite cities, has it not? You can even use magic again," she added, and there's something almost sly in her tone.

"I- what?" he choked out, thrown for a loop yet again.

He almost can't believe what she's saying, but...he can feel it there, the magic under his skin. It's a sensation he hasn't experienced in centuries upon centuries, not since his mother had first turned their whole family into vampires with her magic.

He'd always mourned and raged at the loss of his magic that the vampirism had caused, and now...

Now he had it again, that elemental force lurking under his skin and in his blood, the power threading its way throughout his very soul.

"The body I found for you was originally a powerful practitioner in their own right," his mother informed him. "Untried in many areas of magic, but with considerable potential."

Kol looked up at her and entirely by accident caught a glimpse of his reflection in the reflective glass window behind her. Brown hair, blue eyes, pale skin, high cheekbones... "Who was he?" Kol asked without really meaning to, the words just slipping out of their own volition.

Esther gave him that look again, like he was drifting from a prepared script and she didn't like it. "Does it matter? He's not important; that's your body now, not his."

Kol wanted to agree, but there was something nagging at the back of his mind. "I should know his name, at least," he said to his mother. "I can't very well go around introducing myself as Kol Mikaelson looking like this, can I?" he went on, rationalizing it. "That would draw too much attention. Better to use the name already associated with this face, to help forestall suspicion."

Eshter-in-a-teenage-body pursed her lips but nodded reluctantly. "I suppose that's true," she acknowledged. "His name was Kaleb. Kaleb Westphall. He was originally from Liverpool, from a long line of skilled witches."

"Liverpool, huh?" Kol took that tidbit of information and filed it away. "That's a bit far away. What was he doing here in New Orleans?"

"It doesn't matter," his mother snapped, tone growing impatient. "What matters is the here and now, and what we need to accomplish." She paused for a moment, a gleam of calculation in her eyes, and then spoke again. "There's something I need you to do for me, my sweet son."

He felt something like resignation wrap around his new heart. Should've known there was a catch, he thought to himself, even as he opened his mouth and asked, "What do you need, Mother?"

She gave a grim smile. "It's to do with your other siblings," she told him. "And some of the witches they've allied themselves with."

A/N: Okay, so...that was the second full-length chapter, and also Kol's introduction into the Inevitable series.

I would totally appreciate any and all feedback, if you guys have a second to share your thoughts on the chapter. As mentioned, I struggled with this chapter a bit, so any input at all would be enormously helpful (especially since I'm still getting a feel for Kol as a character; this chapter was my first time writing him, so I'm curious to see what you all thought of it). That being said, I did have a fun time on this chapter (writer's block moments notwithstanding, of course), so I hope all of you enjoyed it as well! :)