Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So, frankly speaking, I think I’m in the past.
Well—what a SURPRISE.

Maybe I finally lost my mind after a thousand years in this world, but hear me out before you roll your eyes. I wouldn’t be making such a ridiculous observation if I didn’t have a very compelling reason.

See, I’ve already fought evil far worse than the Hollow. Behold: the bloody Malivore. And now I’m stuck saving my niece—who, let me tell you, has a suicidal streak even by Mikaelson standards. It’s bloody exhausting to keep her from throwing herself into self-sacrifice every other day.

Now, apparently, modern teenagers have this phrase when things go very, very wrong: “shit hit the fan.” A rather elegant description, really. And that’s precisely what Hope has managed to attract into her life.

But let’s talk about the real comedy here. The so-called Principal of this “school.” I don’t know if the man is a fool or just willfully negligent, but either way, he’s unfit to run a human academy, let alone one filled with supernatural teenagers. He lets the children play vigilante, run monster hunts, and solve crises that no adult seems to care about. Voila, the perfect recipe for disaster.

Had my brother known this buffoon was playing savior with Hope’s life, he would’ve burned the place to the ground long ago—and slowly pulled the man’s entrails out for good measure. And I would have let him, without an ounce of guilt. Because here’s the truth about me: I can live without innocence, without reputation, without anything except family. But a Mikaelson does not live without family.

Family is, and always will be, Always and Forever.

And then there’s this stroke of genius: “Let’s keep Malivore in a cage in the school gym.” I nearly face-palmed myself into the astral plane at the sheer stupidity of it. When Hope came to me explaining what had gone down before Malivore’s capture, I was incensed—not just at the incompetence, but at the utter lack of care for what the students were going through. No guidance, no protection, just trauma wrapped up as extracurriculars.

My opinion of the academy? Sinking faster than quicksand.

And thank the gods I won that fight with my wife about sending my son Nik to that damned place. I’ll admit, a sliver of guilt whispered maybe I was being too harsh… but here we are. Trouble, chaos, and proof that I was right all along. Which, by the way, makes it my absolute pleasure to rub it in her face. Again.

The only reason Hope was still allowed at that school was because of her attachment to its Principal. Well—fuck that. I’m going to drag her out myself if I have to, and shake some sense into her about her life and her future.

Because no matter what, I will keep the promise I made to her parents: to protect her, to guide her, to remind her that her birth wasn’t some “loophole” to destroy Malivore. It was a miracle. A gift. Redemption for her parents, and for all of us Mikaelsons.

And I’ll be damned if I let anyone—Hope included—throw that miracle away.

Chapter Text

A coffin is a funeral box used to hold or display a body before burial or cremation.

Coffins have six sides including the top and bottom, tapering around the shoulders, or sometimes rectangular with four sides.

The Mikaelsons, of course, prefer fancy ones — dramatic flair and all that. I’m fairly sure Klaus had contracts with some old family just to make unique, comfortable coffins for us.

Well, you see, for a Mikaelson, a coffin isn’t meant for cremation or burial. It’s a cage. A way to keep us from living our undead, immortal lives among other creatures, and especially mortals.

To be straight, I’m 95% sure absolutely nobody in the world has awoken in a coffin as many bloody times as the Mikaelson clan.

I stop myself here, remembering my wife’s not-so-hilarious joke about the word straight in my vocabulary. It’s a bad habit of mine — whenever I want to end an argument, I say, “To be straight with you.” And every time, without fail, she puts it down by saying, “You were never straight with me at all.” And, of course, I hate walking right into it. Always like, “Just why?”

Either way, being locked in a coffin for a few centuries does dreadful things to one’s pop culture knowledge. Mine is weak at best, abysmal at worst. Not the time to lament my misery of watching my Nick talk in absolute alien language from a movie — and then look sullen when I didn’t understand. Definitely a joke I missed. Like many others.

And then I realise — Nick is alone now. Oh no.

I banish the spell that kept me in stasis and open the coffin again with another spell. Of course, one of the first places I return to is the asylum.

“How?” asks a young girl — or maybe a woman, whatever. Stress has turned me into this haywire person.

“Hello there, can I know which year it is?” I ask politely, thinking she might be Cassie, the lass I killed the last time I escaped the asylum. Why? Because at least her last moments could be nice this time.

“2012,” Cassie replies promptly, out of habit I think. I ask again, politely, for the date.

By some miracle, Cassie doesn’t force my hand this time. Instead, she’s forthcoming: December 29th.

Well, good for Cassie. She’s going to die before the new year.

“Cassie, dear, be a good girl and don’t call your allies to their early deaths, okay?” I say with politeness — even though I know I’m sending her to the ancestral plane of New Orleans witches. Which can only be described in a few words: purgatory hell.

Not the best phrasing, but it is what it is. (A popular phrase Nick loves to toss around whenever he breaks the rules.)

“2012. What a year it is, isn’t it, Cassie?”

“You are supposed to be asleep.”

“I got bored, Cassie. Don’t mind me breaking out, don’t you?”

But, of course, Cassie is a stupid lass. She calls her allies — the Kindred. I kill them effortlessly. A surprise even to me. I haven’t felt this powerful in a long time.

“Cassie, that wasn’t a good choice, was it?” Snap. Cassie never saw a day of 2013.

And then, the realisation. Power and connection can’t be faked by an illusion. With each spell, I felt the lie I was feeding myself lose its grip.

To be not cryptic — Freya Mikaelson tops the Board of Utter Impossibility.

This board’s former champion was Hope, after Klaus was gone. Hope ranked first, Kol followed close in third after pioneering new vampiric magic creation (and hating that he still came second to his niece simply because she was a tribrid).

Back to how this ordeal even began: the Gemini twins. Their prison modification spell. The new prototype. Secretive, of course. A gift for Hope in case Plan Z ever needed activation.

Hope thought it unwise to keep any artefacts on her during the fight with Malivore, so she gave me that prison artefact. Which turned out to be — drumrolls, trumpets, the entire New Orleans parade band, please —

Time travel.

To be specific: back to a significant year where the artefact-bearer’s life had changed.

Hope’s trigger might have been when her mother died. Or one of a million other possibilities.

But for me? For Freya Mikaelson? It was December 30, 2012. The day my spirit arrived and woke in my coffin.

That day, for better or worse, my life changed. My siblings acknowledged me, embraced me as family. Nick, Kol, Hope, Rebekah — all lost, but in a different way, I had gained them.

“So much for being safe and returning home safely, sister,” I said, looking at Rebekah in Eva Sinclair’s body.

Chapter Text

Time. The one thing I’ve never been able to master, no matter how much magic I learned, how many spells I cast, or how much blood I spilled. And now, it seems, I don’t need to master it. Because time has decided to master me.

Time travel. It’s happening. I don’t know if it’s a gift, a curse, or just another cruel joke the universe enjoys playing on the Mikaelsons. But one thing is certain: I’m here, watching my brothers — long dead, long gone — fight as though the centuries between their deaths and this moment mean nothing.

Do you have any idea what it feels like? To see the people you mourned, the people you burned candles for, the people you sacrificed everything to protect — standing before you as if no time has passed? It’s maddening. It’s heartbreaking. And yet, for one fleeting moment, it’s the most precious miracle I could have asked for.

But sentiment won’t save us. My niece, Hope, is once again at the center of it all — because of course she is. She carries not only the burden of being the Tribrid but also the unbearable weight of every Mikaelson sacrifice that came before her. And I cannot — I will not — let her bear it alone.

If I must bend time itself, rewrite fate, or burn the world again, then so be it. I am Freya Mikaelson, the firstborn, the witch who survived when I was never meant to. And this time, I won’t let time take what’s mine. Not again.