DISCLAIMER! I do not own the characters of Damon and Stefan Salvatore... However, they are such fun characters to utilize. The plot and OCs are all mine. Enjoy! this is the first time I'm posting my fan fiction in a public forum!

A sliver of sunlight peeked through Charlotte Marchand's thick, coffee-colored curtains. The trail of light illuminated her figure which rested on her couch. An infomercial on moisturizing socks was playing on the small plasma TV, yet Charlotte, or Charley as she liked to be called, wasn't watching it. On the contrary, her mind was deep in the recesses of a drunken REM cycle. After a long night of flirting with bartenders at the upscale bars in the part of Philadelphia called Old City, she had taken a cab back to her apartment on the upper end of Chestnut Street, climbed the short flight of stairs to her second story room and collapsed on her black leather couch, wrapping her afghan throw around her body. Slowly, the sun moved upward and the trail crept closer to her face, prying her eyes open slowly. She blinked a few times, rubbing her eyes, and groaned.

The last thing she wanted to do was wake up, especially as early as she was. It was a Saturday, which meant that she had the chance to sleep in and be lazy, unlike the rest of her week, which she spent going to class, studying and doing research for her research assistantship at her university. She truly did not condone staying out all night and getting extremely drunk, but as her best friend Lena always said, 'alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.' She was a theater major, a huge fan of George Bernard Shaw, and loved living her life by famous people's quotes. She was also very manipulative and convincing, which was why Charley always found herself leaning over a bar soaking wet with spilled liquor and beer, grabbing another mixed drink from the bartender.

She reached down to locate her purse, which was sitting on the floor directly underneath her. She picked it up and pulled out her cell phone. She pressed a button on the side of her phone, which woke it up from its own sleep. The time was seven A.M. She sighed and rested her head back onto the couch. She should have gone back to sleep. However, today was not the day to do that. It was the one day a year where she needed to be alert. The very thought of the day sobered her up immediately. She stood up and walked toward her bathroom, undressing herself as she walked, throwing her dress into the hamper next to the bathroom door. She then turned on the faucet and splashed her face a few times with water to try and remove the remaining mascara and eye shadow from her face. As she dried her face off, she couldn't help but grimace at her reflection; her eyes were dark from lack of sleep and her skin pale. She knew she needed to invigorate herself before she went out and faced the day.

She left the bathroom and headed to her room, throwing on a pair of running pants and a pink ADIDAS t-shirt. Fall was just beginning to hit, so the mornings were prime times to go for a run outside, and it would be just the thing she needed to wake her up and focus her mind on what she had to do today. She threw her blonde hair up into a high ponytail and brushed her long bangs away from her face and secured them with a bobby pin. After slipping on her running shoes and setting up her running playlist, she left the apartment.

Running was the best way that Charley found to get her mind off the stress that she was feeling. School was about two months in, and she was in the thick of all her classes. In addition, she had taken on a graduate research assistant position with her favorite professor, and spent long hours perusing over books, journal articles and websites, trying to help him compile enough evidence for his book. She knew it was all preparing her for her future, yet she still felt sometimes that it wasn't the right future for her, but the future that she just knew and felt comfortable with. However, today school work was in the back of her mind. Today was the day that she had to focus on only one thing: the anniversary of her parents' death.

When she was eighteen years old, her father and mother disappeared after a neighbor's party. Charley was away in college, and her sister Jen, who was a year behind her, called her a day after the party to ask if she'd come home to help search for their parents. They spent a week with the police and her best friend Lena's parents searching for them, when the police pulled two bodies, mutilated, out of the small creek five miles down from their neighborhood. Charley remembered the look on Lena's Mom's face as the police first told her and her husband the news quietly before they had to break it to Charley and Jen. Jen threw up on Lena's couch when they told her and Charley just started to sob. The police interviewed many people in the neighborhood and others that were close to her parents, but could never find a suspect or motive. So Charley and Jen buried their parents without any hope of reconciling the event.

After they died, a man showed up name Mr. Hodges. He said he was their parents lawyer and he produced a will with instructions on how to access their parents funds and how to divvy up their belongings. Both of her parents were only children
and their parents died before Charley was born, so Charley and Jen were the only family they had. Lena's parents took them both in to ensure that they always had somewhere to call home, even though both of them were in the early stages of adulthood, and slowly Charley and Jen rebuilt their lives. Charley continued going to college and Jen took the money her parents passed onto her and started her own boutique store in their old town. However, every year on this particular day, they came together reminisce about their parents and to overload on homemade desserts. Jen would take the train into the city and they would curl up on Charley's couch in their comfiest clothing partaking in various types of cookies and cakes. The first time they did it, both of them cried. But as time went on, they began to delight in the good times they shared with their parents and focus on the events of their own lives. It had turned into a sisterly bonding sessions that brought them closer together.

As she started to delve into her thoughts, she forgot to pay attention to her surroundings and stumbled on a large crack in the sidewalk. As she felt herself losing her balance, a hand reached out and she grabbed it.

"Thanks!" she said with gasping breath. She looked up to see who had saved her. It was a tall, well-built man with dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a smirk.

"No problem, just doing my job, saving women from stumbling over their own feet," he remarked, bowing slightly. He wore a very monochromatic outfit made up of dark washed fitted jeans, black boots and a black button up shirt with a black long pea coat. She wondered for a second if he had just finished work as a stagehand for some show and was making the walk of shame home from some actress's apartment. That premise was something she had seen before courtesy of Lena.

She blushed. "Ah, well, they don't pay you enough to do it I assure you."

He chuckled. "Yes, they most certainly don't." He tipped his head in her direction. "You be careful now, you hear? I won't always be around to save you from certain death."

"I'll try, thank you, my mysterious savior." She laughed and mocked a curtsy as he walked away. She couldn't help but watch as he walked, and he must have felt her eyes burning into his back, because he looked over his shoulder, and let his eyes bore into hers for just a second before he winked. Then he turned and continued on his way.

Charley shook her head, clearing her briefly dirty thoughts, and then continued her run. It had been a long time since she had last been on a date or had a boyfriend, so the picture of her mystery man would be a welcome image in her mind for a few nights to come and was a welcomed distraction from her current thoughts of mourning.

As her figure became more of a spec of pink in distance, a man in a black leather jacket, ripped black skinny jeans and blond spiked hair, appeared from behind a tall broad oak tree that stood just five feet from where Charley had fallen. His face was pallid and gaunt and his eyes an unnatural onyx color, and they were narrowed suspiciously in Charley's general direction. His phone rang in his pocket, and he pulled it out.

"Yes?" he answered. He waited for the person on the other line to speak. "Yes, I went to the address you told me to go to and I found her leaving it." The person on the other line spoke quickly. "I did follow her." They asked a question. "We are not mistaken. That's her. I would notice that venator's face anywhere." Another hurried response. "Okay, I can do that." He then hung up and glanced at Charley's path once more. Once she was completely out of sight, he slowly walked the direction she had ran from and gradually, his body faded from sight, disappearing completely.

"So, true or false, you had a major crush on Alex Strong back in fifth grade." Charley looked over at her sister, Jen, who was looking at her expectantly as she was mixing a peanut butter cookie batter in one of Charley's glass mixing bowls.

"True, why do you ask?" Charley asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

Jen grinned. "No reason." She looked down at her cookie batter and started humming to herself. Jen was the complete opposite of Charley in appearance and attitude. Jen had dark, curly hair that some mistook for black, which she always kept in a bob. Her skin more of an olive tone. She also spoke her mind quite often and wasn't afraid of letting someone know if they were wrong. Charley was always more of the peacemaker, yet she secretly envied her sister's bluntness. Jen also enjoyed withholding information to antagonize other people.

"Jen, you wouldn't just ask me something like that unless you had a reason, so let it out."

"Okay, fine! Well, Alex was in my store the other day, getting a gift card for his sister, Emily –you remember her, really tall, volleyball player?"

"Oh God yes," Charley replied. "That family was just born to play sports."

"I know it. Anyway, we got to talking and he asked about you, particularly if you were seeing anyone or not. Apparently, he's had a thing for you since high school."

Charley raised her eyebrows. "And he's telling you this now?"

"Yeah! Why not? Anyway, so I kind of gave him your number and told him to give you a call." She went back to putting balls of cookie dough together and placing them on the baking sheets.

"What! Jen why?" Not that Charley wasn't a little bit excited about it; Alex Strong was the best soccer player on their high school team and was considered good looking by almost all of the girls in the school (if you were into blond hair, blue eyes, and the strong, lean look). However, he and Charley never ran in the same circles. She didn't even know what he was up to anymore since they weren't friends on Facebook.

"He's coming here to Philly for a job interview with some accounting firm and since you've basically lived here since undergrad, that you would be the perfect guide."

"Accounting huh? That doesn't seem so bad," Charley wondered aloud. Jen looked up at her and smiled.

"Yeah, definitely not a bad deal. Do you know how much those number crunchers make? A lot more than what you'll make in publishing that's for sure!"

Charley rolled her eyes. "Whatever." She poured herself a glass of Merlot and sat down on the couch. "Well, if he calls me, I guess I'll pick up."

"That's the spirit!" Jen placed the cookies into the oven and then went to join Charley on the couch. She leaned her head against Charley's shoulder and sighed. "I wanted to tell you something else too."

"Hmm?"

"Well a few days ago, I came home from the shop and someone had broken into Mom and Dad's house." Even though Jen lived there full time now, they always considered it their parents, which made this news more disturbing.

"What? Why didn't you tell me when it happened?" Charley felt hurt that she had waited this long to tell her.

"I knew you were busy with research and I didn't want to bother you, especially since nothing was taken. At least nothing that we would consider valuable." When Charley raised her eyebrow, Jen continued, "The TV, the expensive china, all of that was still there. They went after Dad's old study and tore the place up. His books were everywhere, the desk drawers were ripped open…it seemed as if whoever broke in was looking for something very particular."

"What on Earth would Dad have that would need to be hidden? The man was a history teacher, not a CIA agent."

"I know," Jen retorted. "I called Mr. Hodges, and he came over to take a look. Remember how he and Dad were always working together in there? I figured he would have a better memory of what was in that room than we would. He claimed he couldn't see anything that was taken, but he had an uneasy look on his face, which made me think otherwise."

"And…" Charley said with an expectant look.

"And… so I did some digging. Dad never really talked about his past, you know? We knew Mom's past since she grew up in the same town as we did, but Dad always let her do all of the talking." She took a sip of Charley's wine, and Charley made a disgusted face. "So I searched for information on him in his office, but couldn't find anything: no birth certificate, no old yearbooks, nothing. All I could find were financial books that tracked the money that he and Mom left to us in their will and scraps of paper with weird doodles on them. So I searched for him on the Internet, and the only thing that popped up was his teacher page for the middle school."

"Well, Dad liked his secrets. Maybe he's ashamed of his past? At least you didn't find out he's some ex-convict."

"Yeah, I know, but the attack seemed so targeted…" Jen's eyes lit up. "Oh and get this! I also did a search for Mr. Hodges and his law firm, and nothing popped up… n-o-t-h-i-n-g. I mean, you'd think that he'd be at least listed in the Yellow Pages to drum up business, you know?"

"So, you think that Mr. Hodges and Dad were working on something and someone else wanted the information? Jen, that sounds crazy. Dad was a teacher. He played squash in the mornings! He liked argyle sweaters!"

Jen grimaced. "Yeah I know, that was a mistake." She sighed. "I know it sounds crazy, but I wanted you to know. I just think it's too coincidental you know?"

Charley nodded. "The circumstances do sound strange. But, I don't know if we need to be delving into Dad's past. What if we find out something we don't like? I'd hate to have my image of our father marred without him being able to give us an explanation."

"Yeah, I know. And I doubt the person will come back, now that they know what they want isn't there." Jen cuddled closer to Charley and whispered, "I really still miss them Charley."

Charley's lower lip trembled and she pulled Jen close, hugging her left arm around her. "I do too Jen."