Maeve looked one last time at herself before she headed for the door.

"Are you sure about this?" asked Patrick, one last time.

Maeve sighed and turned on the back of her left heel, "Patrick, just look after Hope for me and...I'll see after the rest, okay? I've got it sorted."

Patrick scoffed at her words. "Didn't look like it when Kai Parker came knocking on the door! Or did you forget that?"

"No I did not and that is something I unfortunately have to deal with once I finish this business, until then, look after Hope."

"Yeah yeah. You look after her father and uncles and that one aunt. God alone knows the horrors they all are up to."

Horrors. What a sensational word. Maeve felt the breech in the spells she had casted over the Abbatoir before she left New Orleans. She felt the cracks form and parts where her magic that weakened. She was certain of the horrors the place had endured in thr past months; emotional and physical. She took the stairs to the private dining area where she knew the evening would be in full commence. A meeting she was about to infiltrate.

"I wish you could see that my every action has been to protect you." she heard the voice of a teenager speak from within the room.

"You actually believe that, don't you?" Klaus asked. "I knew you were a liar but now I see you're utterly delusional." Maeve knew instantly that Esther had found herself a host body to live in as her original one was buried deep within the soil of New Orleans.

"If you can, forget the hatred that you cling to and remember all the times I've mended and healed you." Esther tried reminding her children of the possible simpler times. She heard the ice cold laughter of Klaus that followed Esther's words.

Choosing this as her moment she made herself seen. "Why should they forget the hatred when all that you have ever given them is nothing but precisely that."

All heads turned to her but she had her eyes only on the one chair turned away from her.

"I was wondering when I would see you again, Maeve." spoke the teenage girl or Esther. "How have you been?"

"Oh nothing to complain about."

"I was surprised when I didn't see you by Elijah's side. Hasn't he been treating you right?"

Maeve couldn't help herself but laugh at her. "He had been the best, it's me who needed to figure a few things out before our relationship could go any further." she briefly looked at Elijah. Elijah was staring at her without a single reaction, he just held a strong gaze on her.

"You know what I always wondered the most?" Maeve strolled further into the room and stood just beside Esther's chair, "Why do the siblings care so much about me?" Through the corner of her eyes she saw Klaus and Rebekah roll their eyes in unison, while Elijah simple began to find his glass o wine more interesting than her.

"Find another obsession will you?" commented Kol.

"Oh, dear Koala. I am serious, it is not one of my spirals. I promise." She gazed at Klaus directly, "You must have wondered, the always so cautious and never so accepting of strangers Klaus Mikaelson opened his arms, heart and home for the outcast hybrid having the strength to murder him in the blink of an eye." She turned to Esther, "All of them took me under their wing when I thought no one outside my pack would. I thought it was impossible because how quickly it happened. Then I met you."

Esther shifted into her chair slightly. She held a strong gaze with Maeve, one that conveyed a message...clearly it was a challenge. "You were surprised to see me, shocked even and not to mention your two attempts to kill me. It got me thinking what was it that made you want to murder me and them protect me. What could be the reason that they were ready to do everything in their power to save me when I didn't want to save myself."

"Maeve...you don't understand." Esther began but Maeve stopped her immediately.

"I understand plenty. You claim to be the perfect mother who did everything to protect her children, when the truth that remains---the only thing that matters is that you are a monster these unfortunate ones have to call mother."

Esther turned to Elijah instead of responding to Maeve, "Elijah, do you recall the day Niklaus challenged your father to a duel? Did I leave your brother to die alone? What did I say when you came to me and asked me to help him?"

"That you would rather die than watch any of your children suffer." Elijah recited.

"Don't try to change the subject."

"You are the one who imposed herself in our family matter and dare speak about changing the subject?" the other man sitting in the room spoke up for the first time since Maeve stepped into the room.

"Finn, the one who got cursed the worst. Please it's about time you too start seeing her for what she truly is."   

"The necklace." Klaus said interrupting Maeve. She glanced at him watching as his furrowed brow softened, as did his eyes. He looked as if he remembered the mentioned incident. "It wasn't a spell to protect me. It made me weak."

"I sought to protect you from yourself. You would have killed your father in that duel or anyone else over the course of your life, you would have activated your curse." argued Esther. It was clear her intentions with regards to the necklace were nothing but selfish. Maeve looked from Esther to Klaus and back.

Klaus slammed his hands on the table. "You ruined me." He shouted angrily. "You left me to suffer at the hands of a father who valued only strength."

"I kept you from becoming a beast for as long as I possibly could." defended Esther.

"Oh, you lied to me to hide your own transgressions because of your own fear!" He slammed his hands on the table once again, this time standing up on his feet. "All my life, I sought the approval I was denied by the man I thought was my father. You turned me into the weakling his hated!" Esther lowered her eyes feeling the guilt rise up in her.

"Look at me!" demanded Klaus. "You rant, and you rage about the monster I have become, but you, mother, you are the author of everything I am." Esther gasped and leaned forward. But Maeve was quick.

"Not so fast. You don't get to take the cowards way out this time. Not before they all get the answers they deserve." Esther's face turned red before it returned to its previous pale white state. 

"Tell them Esther." said Maeve decidedly and with a challenging look in her eyes. 

"Maeve please..." silence fell in the room. Every eye was set on Maeve. Esther didn't look sorrowful or regretful. She simple stared at Maeve.

"What is happening? Maeve tell us now!" exclaimed Rebekah. 

"Tell them the truth, Esther," Maeve pierced through the thick silence, her voice unwavering but laced with icy contempt.

"You knew about the curse," Maeve continued, pacing like a predator encircling its prey. "Knew it would be they who'd bear its mark." Maeve stood right beside Esther, staring her down with her blood red eyes. 

Rebekah swallowed hard as realization struck—a gasp escaped her lips while Kol spat out fine wine, staining his white shirt red like spilled blood of moments lost.

"You knew exactly what would happen if you did the spell. You knew it wouldn't be you who would face the consequences but it would be them." her voice thundered through the silence of the room. Although her voice was as it normally would be, but her words only build the tension. "She told you what would happen if you did the spell. And when she went to warn them all, you killed her. You murdered her brutally."

Esther rose abruptly from her high-backed chair, desperation flaring in her voice as she barked defenses veiled in a mother's molten anger.

"She would have ripped them away! Filled their heads with fairy tales of freedom—freedom from me."

Maeve laughed darkly as Esther's outbreak. "It is amusing you think she was poisoning them, when all she ever did was give every single one of them a sanctuary to escape you and Mikael. None of them ever understood their immediate instinct to protect me, save me, most of all trust me. Finn always wanted to die but never knew why. All because you took the one thing from them that kept them human. When you realised that they would turn against you, you erased her."

Esther's face turned pale when she suddenly realised what Maeve was going to do next. "You wouldn't dare."

"You really are still underestimating me. What do you think Finn will do when he learns the whole truth? How would he feel when he realises his mother is the reason he wanted to die in the first place? Maybe they should remember themselves."

Maeve turned to the siblings, "you must remember something. A friend, someone you trusted. A powerful someone in the village you grew up...vaguely."

"A witch." said Elijah. "A witch believed to be powerful lived in the village. I...I can't remember who she was." 

"Ivanna. You are thinking of Ivanna." Esther hurriedly said in a pitched voice, one last attempt to salvage the conversation before Maeve did anything further

"No, I remember, there was someone who was stronger." added on Rebekah, a knowing look on her face becoming the give away that she was in fact recalling something.

Maeve chuckled softly but with coldness, "You erased Finn's memories completely but forgot that she meant something to every one of them and not just him."

"Maeve..." but Maeve didn't listen to Esther. She lifted up her hands and muttered something under her breath. The room started to shake, the siblings clutched their and let out an agonising grunt before they all collapsed to the floor. 

"What have you done?" asked Esther.

"Something I have been preparing for, for months." replied Maeve. "Who will be on your side now, huh Esther? Look at you, making them pay for your mistakes. What kind of a mother are you?"

"You wouldn't understand the sacrifices it takes to be a mother."

"Don't even think about telling me about sacrifices a mother makes for her children. You did everything to protect yourself. To protect yourself from Mikael, you made a deal with Dahlia and without a heartbeat gave your daughter away, and when Iona warned you of the consequences of what would become of your children, you killed her, erased her from their memories and performed the spell." Maeve took another threatening step closer to Esther, "What you should have thought of, was Iona prophecied to the skies that night as she laid bleeding out on the forest floor. 'A serene witch will come for a Mikaelson's help when they need it the most.' That was the night my fate was sealed and so was theirs."

Esther gasped again and her body trembled. This time Maeve didn't stop her. The teenage girl's body fell limp back on the chair. It was now just about time before the Mikaelson siblings would wake up with their memories restored.

************************************
Hello and once again thank you very much for being patient about the updates.

Hope you liked the update. The next one will give you more about the life of Mikaelsons as humans :)

Take care everyone,

Raven :)