Chapter 18

                                    

                                          
Finn wasn't happy to see her.
"I know you," he said as she pulled him (along with a set of manacles he wore, preventing him from performing any spells) into a chair across from her. "Yara Lopes. The vampire who helped Klaus raise his son. Kol told me plenty in Mystic Falls."
"Nice to formally meet you, Finn," said Yara, sitting with him and pushing forward a tray of fruit and some water. 
He reached out carefully, plucking up a small square of melon. "It surprises me that Niklaus would let you speak to me. It's difficult to believe... as is the fact that you find it nice to meet me."
She shrugged. "What can I say? I lived with this family for a long time and knew everyone but you. I was always curious. I heard interesting things."
"I don't appreciate liars."
"I'm not kidding. Your past is interesting. All of you, it's a story with a lot of substance. And your siblings of course, well, they say rude things. I wanted to see for myself if it was true. I don't think you're as boring as they claim you are, I think they just didn't like to be judged. You're the oldest child, surely you were trying to keep them safe. Sometimes young children find it difficult to appreciate the counsel of an older one. They see it as being bossed around and they stop liking it. Some grow up and learn that their best interests were at heart, others never seem to realize it."
"Are you approaching a point?"
Yara raised a brow. "I expected hostility given you are being kept against your will, but I am really only trying to ease into conversation. If you'd prefer I get to the point, it's this: I want to find out more about Esther, Dahlia, and Freya. I'm told you're the only one who knows anything."
"Of course it matters to you. You took over that pregnancy to bring that wretched demon child into this world, as if Niklaus needed another one to ruin."
She leaned back in her seat. "Just like your mother ruined all of you? Yes, you might put her on a pedestal, but let me tell you, as someone who had a good mother, yours is borderline psychotic and just plain abusive. Manipulating a little boy into lying to his own father about what really happened to his sister? Making him feel he had to keep mama's secret from everyone? Giving a power-suppressing necklace to a boy born from her infidelity to sweep it under the rug and then turning around like that surprised Pikachu meme that's floating around and locking away the part of him he only has at her abusive husband's request? An abusive husband she could have easily defeated to protect her children but didn't? Tell me, Finn, did your father ever hit you or say something rude to you? Did you ever wish him gone because you saw him hurt one of your siblings? Would Freya have stood for it? Did you? Have you honored your sister, ripped away from you not only by your aunt but by that wretched woman you call mother?"
He sat up, but she pushed him back into his chair with her foot. "Your mother," she said more softly, "ruined you all. Not just the siblings you hate. She hurt you and she hurt Freya. Who in their right mind manipulates a little boy into keeping such a dark secret? Who in their right mind makes good on such an awful promise? If I had been Esther, I would have preferred to die than to give my children away. I would have found out how to kill Dahlia rather than see my firstborn, my daughter, taken by a woman who wouldn't love her and would only exploit her. Have you thought of what your sister must have been through, what she must be going through now? The abuse Dahlia probably inflicted on her? Is poor Freya even still alive, or did Dahlia rip through her?"
"You will not besmirch my mother with your wicked vampire tongue!" he snapped.
"I'll do whatever the hell I want with your bitch mother because she regretted making vampires but she had a fucking choice, you always have a choice. You could claim she wanted to end the bloodline, that she wanted to keep you alive. She could have tried to help you all and instead she turned her back and made you all hate yourselves and each other and if she died because of it, it's nobody's fault but her own! She wants to call us all monsters, she wants to watch us die, well she can put her head on the chopping block, too, because she's no more a saint than we are and it is so ridiculous she has led you to believe otherwise! She's brainwashed you, Finn! You don't know what freedom is because you escaped your siblings just to run to mommy and what did she do? Tried to get you to sacrifice yourself, tried to get you to hurt an innocent baby. Is that what a mother does? Newsflash, the answer is no. I have not been a mother for nearly as long as Esther, and I cannot fathom what she went through; everyone's experience is different. But I do know for certain that woman has committed many wrongs. The first being what she did to you and Freya. And there are many offenses that come after that."