I haven’t been able to “fandom” correctly due to stress, work, my mom’s health (not in the clear just yet) and school. But I’ve been lurking the way people discuss Bonnie/Qetsiyah vs the other witches is always… telling lol. Now yes racial dynamics bc of the writing does come into play but some people truly do seem to think that Bonnie and Qet couldn’t have done the same things that Freya/Dahlia and Hope etc does when in fact it’s just a loud clear distinction in how they saw the black women as servitudes while the white women are servitudes but done in a girl-boss type of way… yap
Okay I wrote chapter one of Finn x Leo. Idk if I should post it on AO3 just yet? I don't wanna post just one chapter and then dip as I try to cook up more chapters... anyway, I'm gonna post here until I have five chapters that I can post on AO3.
Title: LEO BENNETT’S STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE INTO SURVIVING A TWO-THOUSAND-YEARS LONG FAMILY FEUD
Summary:
STEP 1:
When your long dead great-great-great-something grandma wakes you up at 3am: IGNORE HER.
STEP 2:
If she persists and manages to force you out of a deep slumber to show you what requires your immediate attention, sleep be damned:
DO NOT panic when you see a thousand years old desiccated vampire on your hotel suite’s couch. Witches, especially dead ones, can be macabre like that. It’s fine.
DO NOT wake up the desiccated vampire. No matter how much your long dead great grandma persists.
STEP 3:
If your hand is forced by the annoying ancient spirit of your ancestor to wake the vampire up: DO NOT get close to him more than necessary. He is your ancestor’s tool for vengeance, not your friend.
STEP 4:
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, FALL IN LOVE WITH SAID VAMPIRE. Yes, he may be tragically beautiful BUT THAT IS NOT THE POINT.
STEP 5:
If, say, you find yourself falling for the vampire regardless: DO NOT let it get in the way between you and your mission of avenging your ancestor’s honor. Seriously, finding out her two thousand years long master plan of extracting vengeance on her ex is being derailed due to a romance will NOT go well with the scorned woman.
OR:
A simple act of kindness somehow results in Leo’s hand being forced into helping his long dead great-great-great-something grandmother with getting her long-awaited (and by long, Leo’s talking long here. Think two thousand years) revenge on her ex. His grandma has absolutely no respect for Leo’s plans and decides to take matters into her own hands. That’s how Leo wakes up on a random Sunday to find a millenia-old desiccated vampire in his hotel room. He absolutely does not scream, no matter what that crazy old witch Qetsiyah might say later on, thank you very much.
1
“Lionel, wake up.”
The words drift over Leo’s sleeping form like a gentle breeze. They do not so much as stir awake the slumbering man.
“Lionel.”
A small smile touches the young man’s face as he dreams of the Swiss Alps.
“Lionel Bennett.”
In his dreams, the man watches the Alps come into view and relaxes into the strong, lean arms holding him. A dreamy sigh escapes the sleeping man’s lips.
CLANG!
Leo Bennet jerks awake and glances around wildly for the source of noise, heart in his throat.
Is he being attacked? Are the police storming his house? Is there an earthquake? A hurricane? Is he dying?
“Enough with the dramatics, it was me who woke you.”
Leo’s brows furrow. Oh, that certainly makes more sense. Why would the police storm his house anyway? And he isn’t even in his home, he’s in a hotel suite - a beautiful, spacious hotel suite, draped in the darkness of the night, provided shamelessly by his father’s card, that is meant to be his safe haven and getaway for brainstorming during the month.
“It is the 27th,” Qetsiyah says scornfully. “You were making no progress. I had to take matters into my own hands.”
“This couldn’t wait until the morning?” He asks tiredly.
What is the time anyway? God, he’d been having such a good dream. He was seeing the Swiss Alps and there had been someone holding him and - and. Trying to remember was like trying to grasp onto a summer breeze.
“It’s 3am. Turn on the lights and get out of bed,” Qetsiyah commands.
3 am? As in three, 3am? As in three in the morning?
Miserable and cold and extremely sleepy, Leo turns on the bedside lamp -
- and screams at the sight that greets him.
There, on the couch beneath the window facing the right side of the bed, lay the grey veiny corpse of a vampire.
“What the fuck?!”
“This is Finn Mikaelson,” Qetsiyah explains calmly. “He is to be the source you channel for the location spell. Not your nonsense ideas.”
At this point, Leo is well out of his bed, the lights of the suite all switched on as he circles the corpse hesitantly, noting the silver dagger that protrudes out of it.
“How,” Leo asks in a hushed voice, “is a dead vampire a better source of magic than the sun?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Qetsiyah chides. “That’s an Original vampire, not any vampire. And he’s not dead, just daggered.”
Leo hmm, pretending to understand what those words mean as he observes the not-corpse of the daggered vampire. Tall - incredibly so - with long brown hair matted with dust and grime. His face fares no better than his hair, covered in layers of dust and dirt. And his clothes - well, they must have been rather nice when he first wore them but now…
More than a little curious, and very terrified, Leo touches the hilt of the dagger embedded in the vampire’s chest. When the vampire does not mysteriously wake up to clutch his wrist and devour him, Leo feels emboldened enough to trace the hilt, feeling its carvings. Then, his hands move lower to test the sharp end of the blade that isn’t buried in the vampire’s chest and is rather surprised to find the blade dull. Huh.
Well, he supposes, it’s not like they could sharpen the blade while it’s buried in the vampire’s chest.
“Pull it out,” Qetsiyah orders.
“And whose blood do you volunteer to sate it?” Leo asks dryly. “Because I’m not offering and I don’t think the hotel residents are either.”
“Well, what now?”
“I don’t know, grandma - “ “Don’t call me that.” “ - you couldn’t have brought along some blood bags for it?”
Qetsiyah remains silent. With an eye roll, Leo withdraws from the vampire and takes several steps back.
“I’m gonna need to get some blood bags. How much do you think it’ll require?”
“When his siblings first woke from being daggered at the hands of my hunters, they drained a village dry.”
“Well, okay. Sure. That’s - whatever. How long were they daggered? How many siblings were daggered? How large was the village? Do you think each of its siblings needed their body’s weight in blood to feel sated? Do you think the duration of their desiccation played a part in how much blood they required?”
Qetsiyah’s long and tired sigh reverberates through his skull, which is hilarious, because if there is anyone here between the two of them who should be doing that it’d be Leo, who’d been working like a dog day and night, trying to find the dead woman’s shitty ex. Qetsiyah doesn’t even have a body to feel tired.
“They were daggered for a few hours. Three siblings. It was a large village. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Wow, that’s so helpful,” Leo says flatly. “Seriously, this couldn’t wait until the morning? How am I gonna get blood bags?”
“It is morning -” “A sensible hour of the morning.” “ - and you can call that Carl of yours.”
“He’s sleeping,” Leo says. “Because that’s what people do at this hour, they sleep. Where’d you even get an Original from anyway?”
“Your father pays him hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, he can wake up to get you the bags.”
“He’s not my slave,” he snaps, annoyed. God, he should have never explained modern concepts like the American dollar to her. “And seriously, where’d you get an Original from?”
“Lionel, if you don’t wake him now, I will, and I don’t care who he eats when he wakes. As for the Original, the Salvatore brothers stole the coffins from Klaus and hid them at the old witch house. The witches agreed to send you Finn by my request.”
“The who brothers stole what and took them where?”
“I’m not going to sit here and explain to you a year’s worth of drama while he lies desiccated,” Qetsiyah snaps. “Call Carl, now.”
With a long and weary sigh of his own, Leo walks back towards the bedside table, never taking his eyes off the vampire, just in case.
He tries to come up with an excuse to tell Carl why he’d need twenty blood bags at three am as he feels around for his phone. He ends up dialing Carl’s number with not a thought in his head.
Carl, predictably, does not answer.
“He’s not answering,” he states the obvious. “Let’s try again in a few hours.”
“Call him again,” Qetsiyah demands.
I’m sorry, Carl, he thinks, ringing him up again. Poor Carl picks up after several long minutes.
“Hello?” He answers gruffly. “Mister Leo, is everything okay?”
“Everything’s okay, Carl,” Leo assures the old man. “I just um. Urgently need twenty blood bags. Please.”
A long beat of silence. Then, “I’m sorry?”
Leo flops down on his bed, eyeing the vampire as he does. “It’s for a project that’s due in seven hours.”
“A… project. Due on a Sunday.”
Leo winces. Fuck.
“It’s, uh. For an online art project, the organization is in, uh, Italy?”
“I was unaware that you have taken an interest in the arts, Mister Leo,” Carl calls him a lying two faced liar who lies very politely.
“It’s, um. A recent passion.” Leo tries to think of something else to say to make sense of his ridiculous request. He comes up empty.
After a long minute, Carl blessedly says, “Fine. You are still at the hotel?”
Almost sick with relief, Leo almost shouts, “Yes!”
“I shall be there in an hour, Mister.”
“Thank you so much, Carl, seriously. I owe you one. By the way um, I’m keeping this on the down low in case the art thing doesn’t take off, so, uh, don’t go around telling mom and dad about it, okay?”
“... I see.”
Leo cringes, “Look -” but Carl’s already hung up.
Great, now his butler thinks he’s up to no good.
“Do you think he’ll tell mom and dad?” He asks Qetsiyah.
“You are twenty three years old,” Qetsiyah says flatly. “Act like it.”
Never mind that Qetsiyah herself had been under her father’s guardianship up until it was time for her to marry… Ugh, he really should not have explained any of the modern day concepts to the dead woman.
Reclining on the bed, Leo silently assures both himself and his ancestor that he was just gonna rest his eyes as he waits for Carl to drop by.
___
A sharp knock jolts Leo out of his sleep. He glances around, almost screams again when he sees the desiccated vampire on the couch, then remembers the events of - he glances at his phone - the last hour.
Right, right. Qetsiyah had sent him an Original for the spell.
Knock, knock, knock.
… And Carl awaits outside the hotel room with twenty blood bags.
Fuck, fuck!
Panicked, Leo tosses the sheets over the vampire, then cringes when he thinks how dirty they’re getting from just touching that ancient stinky thing. Whatever, he’ll worry about that later - actually, wait what the fuck, how was he going to go back to sleep? Oh man, oh MAN. No fucking way is he going to cover himself in those sheets now -
Knock, knock!
Okay, okay, Leo should get the bags first, he’ll worry about his sheets later.
“Hi!” He smiles brightly at Carl as he swings the door open. The old Black man stares at him flatly for a long minute.
“Mister Leo,” he finally says, deep voice laden with inconvenience. “I have your requested products for your… project.”
He hands him a huge backpack. Leo snatches it away instantly.
“Thank you so much, Carl! See you!”
“Mister Leo,” Carl interrupts before he could shut the door. “I trust you are not in any mischief?”
“Me? In mischief? Hah! What do you take me for?”
At Carl’s unimpressed look, Leo assures him, “It really is nothing.”
The old man appraises him for several moments, then nods.
“Should you need anything, Mister, I am here for you.”
The words come off more as a warning than an assurance.
“Of course, of course! Thanks again, Carl.” He shuts the door quickly and rushes to store the blood bags into the hotel suite’s mini-fridge. He’s beyond relieved to find the bags still cold as he shoves them in the mini-fridge none too gracefully, keeping only two in his hands.
With that finally out of the way, Leo turns back towards his current slumbering problem. Now draped in his silken sheets. Aww man, why’d Leo throw them on it? Carl hadn’t even looked inside. Fuck everything.
“Just undagger him already,” Qetsiyah complains.
“I’m on it,” he grouches, shuffling towards the corpse.
He drops the two blood bags at the foot of the couch, then peels back the sheets (his beautiful silken sheets, now stained with dirt…) and hesitantly grips the dagger. For a moment, he does nothing but hold it as he looks at the vampire’s grey face. Then, he pulls it out.
Okay, so. He tries to pull it out. It’s just… well, the thing is a little stuck, he suppo -
“You’re so weak,” Qetsiyah sighs.
“Fuck you, Qetsiyah, I’d like to see you try,” he snaps. So what if he doesn’t have much muscles in his arms? It’s not like he’d been raised to prepare for undaggering ancient vampires on his couch.
“Try again,” Qetsiyah says impatiently. “I’ll help you.”
He bites his tongue to stop himself from saying he doesn’t need her help, because, well. He does. With wounded pride, Leo tries again, this time, the magic of a two thousand years old witch guiding the dagger out of the vampire’s chest with perfect ease.
With the dagger now fully out of its chest and in Leo’s hands, the young Bennet witch stares down at the vampire, hands hovering over its chest, dagger brushing against its dirtied white shirt.
When it doesn’t so much as twitch, Leo finally unfreezes and stumbles backwards, dagger falling from his grasp and clattering on the floor.
“Why won’t it wake?” He asks Qetsiyah.
“It takes some time, why do you think I asked you to undagger him early on?”
Leo rolls his eyes. “How long?”
“When my hunters had daggered his siblings, it took them about an hour to rise again after they’d been undaggered. Although I’ve heard that the longer they remain daggered, the longer it takes them to wake up,” Qetsiyah explained.
“And how long was this one daggered?”
“About nine centuries, give or take.”
Leo laughs. “Really, how long has this one been daggered?”
For a second, Qetsiyah is silent. Then she says slowly, “Nine centuries, give or take.”
The smile falls from Leo’s face. What? What???? Nine centuries?! As in nine hundred years?
“What.”
“Yes.”
“You said - “ Leo tries to collect himself. “You said his siblings were undaggered a few hours after your hunters daggered them?”
Leo… Leo doesn’t understand.
“Oh, ‘it’ is ‘him’ now is he? Yes, the hybrid undaggered his siblings save for this one.”
Doing his best impression of a fish out of water, Leo open and closes his mouth repeatedly then snaps his mouth shut.
He tries to understand.
He doesn’t.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay. What if, what if I fed him some blood? Reckon he’ll… return sooner?”
“Maybe,” Qetsiyah says.
“Maybe?” He asks, annoyed. “Do you know anything?”
“I don’t spend centuries watching over that family,” Qetsiyah snaps. “I was there for their first daggering because my hunters were involved. I didn’t even make the daggers. Although, I suppose the witches who created them were inspired by me.”
Qetsiyah sounds rather proud of herself to have inspired such nonsense.
“Whatever,” Leo says.
He’ll feed the man some blood he supposes.
Leo picks up one blood bag, fumbles with it for several moments, (he’s never even held a blood bag, okay? sue him.), when he finally opens it, he approaches the man and tries to pour some of the blood into his mouth.
He ends up squeezing half of the blood on the man’s face, his own sleeves and the couch. Fuck.
Qetsiyah snorts and Leo has to stop himself from telling her to fuck off.
“I’ve never done this before,” he grouches. “Give me a break.”
He receives no answer from his ancestor, although he does feel her judgement. Ugh.
Leo tries again, this time adding only the slightest bit of pressure on the blood bag. He notes with relief as the blood travels through the bag and into the man’s mouth.
One drop falls into the man’s mouth, followed by another then another. Soon, the bag empties yet the man remains very grey and very veiny and definitely still dead.
“Dude,” he says out loud. “What the hell?”
“Feed him another bag,” Qetsiyah says.
Leo is already on it, but he’s beginning to feel doubt.
“Are we sure this is going to work?” He asks warily as he pours another blood bag down the vampire’s throat.
“Yes, just give it some time. He’s been down for nine centuries.”
Fair enough, Leo muses.
The second bag does nothing for the vampire, so Leo goes to the mini-fridge to get four more. The human body contains 4.5 - 5.7 litres of blood, surely four blood bags plus the one and a half he’s already been fed should be enough to restore life into the vampire’s body?
That’s what Leo spends several minutes doing, squeezing blood down a vampire’s throat. By the third blood bag of the second batch, the veins begin to disappear. By the fourth, the greyness is gone, leaving behind smooth pale skin, smeared with dirt.
Leo pulls back and waits.
Nothing happens.
It hasn’t even been two minutes, he reasons with himself. Just wait.
And that’s what he does. He waits. And waits. And waits.
He begins to count sheep and when he reaches seven hundred forty seven and the man still wouldn’t fucking wake up, Leo turns on his heels and storms over the fucking mini-fridge, because seriously, five and half blood bags should be more than enough to awaken a daggered vampire, these creatures’ greed and gluttony sickens him. No wonder no one likes them.
More than annoyed, and with two new blood bags in his hands, he turns around -
- and screams for the second time that night as the once-dead vampire fucking towers over him.
Rikki, we’re getting a Bennett witch duo moment at epic cons (Bianca Lawson and Kat!)
I love that as a Bennett witch enthusiast! I went to look it up and share the days for my followers who could be in Atlanta and wanted to attend.
The Bennett witches deserved proper screentime to tell their stories! They created and helped everyone within the supernatural world. But, in this franchise that means nothing because they weren’t white. Not to make this post negative here’s some Bennett witch actresses together. I still petition that Emily should’ve came back in some way. Thanks to Lucy’s actress Natashia Williams she shared some behind the scenes photos from the series finale. Last year at a con Jasmine Guy and Persia White snapped a photo.
Kat and Janina look so cozy here. I wish the show cared to develop Qetsiyah and Bonnie versus the route they went with.
Here’s to more Bennett witch moments in the future. Since Bonnie’s ending is traveling the world I assume she’s looking to her family, her entire bloodline can’t be gone.
If she cheated on her man and hid the fact that Klaus wasn't Mikeals for all them years what makes yall think she could make an immortality spell on her own when she could barely do magic herself???
