Disclaimer: Don't own TVD.
I was born 40 years before the 11th century in Europe, to a maritime trading family company on the coast of France. My father was gone most of the year on his precious ships, and his brother, my uncle, stayed at home with us and managed the clerical matters. Up until I turned 15, I was expected to help my mother and younger siblings (all seven of them) around the house with chores and such. Sometimes my uncle, when he was too tired, would allow me to help him balance the books. I enjoyed it; it was good, honest work and I learned my numbers. Sometimes he'd teach me to read, as well, but books and paper and ink were few and far between and I'd have to make do with the company's accounts.
Then my uncle died, when I was 15, and since I was the only one in my family (besides my father) who knew how to calculate numbers and somewhat read, I took my uncle's place. Secretly, of course; it was still the time when women were viewed as unintelligent. The official story was that my younger brother, a year younger than me, had taken my uncle's position. And people in the town didn't see any problem with that.
I loved the bookkeeping, the reading, the learning. I loved it more than I ever thought I would.
When I was 17, and my father returned from his 3-year journey, he was shocked and angry to see his eldest daughter managing the company instead of his eldest son. Even a thousand years later, I can remember the fury in his expression as he roared at my mother:
"You let Marielle run my company!" he bellowed, and overturned our wooden dining table. "Marie should be milking the cow! My son is who should be running this company!"
That was the first night I'd ever seen him hit my mother, and the first night I'd wanted to kill him.
The next morning, my father engaged me to the son of the richest man in town. Through our marriage, my father would merge his trading company with the much more prosperous one of my soon-to-be father-in-law and become a shareholder.
I was married to Christophe a month later. With that came all the duties of a wife. I was not allowed to question my husband, and I was to do all he ordered me to do. The one time I asked to visit my dearest friend, Véronique, he backhanded me so hard that the bruise didn't fade for weeks. And during that time I was forbidden to leave the house, for Christophe feared that the neighbors would see and talk.
I hated my husband, and it both scared me and thrilled me to discover I was with child five months later. I was intensely afraid, for what mother wanted to bring a child into a family such as this? Yet I was also intensely joyful; I was so looking forward to the day when I would be able to hold my own child in my arms, to feel that protective love my own mother was supposed to feel for me.
Christophe wanted a son. I yearned for a daughter, but hoped for a son; a son ensured that my child and I would stay in Christophe's good graces.
It was during this time Christophe graciously allowed me to finally visit Véronique, and Véronique to visit me. She married a year before I did, yet she and her husband were content to never have children. Either that or she never saw her husband, as I was under the impression she didn't like him very much.
It was also during this time that I discovered Christophe and Véronique were having an affair; it hurt less than it should have, but it was enough for me to ask to move back to my parent's home until the baby was born. Mercifully, Christophe let me go without a fight.
I went into labor on a Sunday, when my entire family was at church. No one was around to help, no one was around to hear me scream with every contraction. At least, that was what I believed.
I was laid out on the bed, sweating, recovering from my last contraction, when I felt cool hands on my face.
"How far apart are your contractions, my lady?"
My eyelids fluttered open weakly. A tall, muscular man dressed in opulent finery stood over me, an intense expression on his face. He had brown hair and a cleft in his chin.
"Not very far…minutes, I suppose…"
I felt him move to the end of the bed. "At the next one, what I want you to do is push," he said firmly. "Do you think you could do that?"
"Who…who are you?" I panted.
A flicker of a smile crossed his face. "Just an apothecary who's passing by."
If I had been smarter, I would have screamed for him to leave. But in the state of pain and exhaustion and desperation I was in, I was just eager for it to all end.
I felt another contraction coming on.
The apothecary braced my knees. "Push!"
It was pain beyond all pain, but I obeyed the his instructions to keep pushing. Dimly, I realized another man was in the room, standing at the door.
"Keep pushing. I can see his head," the apothecary urged. "Keep pushing!"
Intense pain. That was all I remembered, that and screaming, before another noise pierced the room: a baby's wail.
"My…baby…" I whispered weakly.
The apothecary smiled at me, but it wasn't a very nice smile. "Congratulations," he said shortly, wrapping the baby in some blankets and handing the bundle to the man by the door. "You have a stillborn son."
"Stillborn? I…can hear him crying," I said faintly, not understanding.
"Kol, if you are here for a meal, would you mind hurrying it up?" the man by the doorway said irritably.
"With pleasure." The apothecary, Kol, clambered onto the bed, leaning over me.
"What…what are you doing?" I squeaked, fear coursing through me.
He glanced down at me, smiling wickedly. "I wouldn't worry, my lady. I'm merely…hungry." He brought a hand to my face, still slick with sweat, and rubbed my bottom lip with his thumb. "Quite a beauty," he said softly.
Angrily, I bit into his thumb, tasting blood. "Let me go! Give me my son, you infidel!"
He growled. If that wasn't frightening enough, his eyes glowed red. Veins protruded around his eyes, his face paled considerably, and his teeth began to sharpen.
And then he bit into my neck, draining me of blood, and I thrashed hopelessly against his steel grip on me. I must have screamed, but to be honest, to this day, I don't remember. Maybe I did, or maybe I didn't, but I do remember him laughing exultantly whenever he raised his head.
That was the day I died. Only 18, a mother for less than five minutes, and I was dead. From the pieces I picked up later, I discovered that my family returned from church to find my body, drained of blood, on the bed, with a wailing baby boy set in my arms. They assumed I had bled to death. And in a way, that was true.
My body was unceremoniously dumped behind the church, where my family was to bury it the next day. As it was the Sabbath, it was decreed that no one was to do any work, so it was a sign of how much I meant to my family that they actually carted my body to the church in the first place.
My body would have been buried the next day if it weren't for that drop of vampire blood I had ingested when I bit the apothecary's finger.
I awoke around midnight, completely disoriented. Everything seemed out of joint.
In a way, it's hard to explain. Sure, my senses were all heightened: sight, smell, touch, hearing. But it was the internal substances that scared me the most: the rage, the fear, the hunger, the love. I never knew how much I hated Christophe or my father until now. I never knew how betrayed I felt by Véronique until now. I never knew how much I loved my unnamed son until now.
I stood, wobbling on my knees. My dress cracked, and I realized it was stiff with blood. Yet I felt awakened, as if I was searching for something, but I didn't know what. An excitement swirled within me, an ignorant, naïve excitement. My thinking went along the lines that death could not conquer me, for I was sure I had been dead. I didn't know what a vampire was, I didn't know what being in transition would drive me to do; all I knew then was that I was dead, and then I came back to life.
Fool that I was, I went to see Christophe. I needed a change of clothes and a talk with my husband about the way he'd been treating me.
His eyes bulged out when he saw me. "Marielle?" he stuttered.
I smiled indulgently. "Who else could it be, my lord?"
"Your father told me you died in childbirth," he said suspiciously.
"I am not a phantom, nor am I a spirit, my lord," I said irritably. "I am flesh and blood, and in dire need of a change of clothes."
Suspicion still clouded his eyes but he stepped aside. I stepped up to the door but found my way blocked by something invisible.
Christophe saw my hesitation and snapped, "Well, what are you waiting for? Come in."
The invisible barrier disappeared and I stepped over the threshold, slightly nonplussed. That was the first sign in my mind something was slightly off.
"I take it my parents thought I died in childbirth," I said over my shoulder from our bedroom. "I must have just fainted."
"You must have." His tone told me he was annoyed.
I slipped out of my torn dress, washed my arms and legs, and slipped into another dress. "I'll have to go see them tomorrow and fix their error in judgment."
"I don't think you will, Marielle."
I spun around, seeing him advance towards me with a silver dagger. "What…what do you think you're doing?" I said slowly, backing up.
"You've been nothing but a bother ever since I married you," he spat out, stopping three feet from me. "I only married you for your beauty and so I could have an heir. Your father promised me that you would be a bore I could easily tuck away should I feel like it."
"Christophe, you're mad."
"Am I?" His eyes glinted with barely suppressed anger. "I hired those men to kill you, Marielle, my star-of-the-sea. I hired them to kill you once you bore my son. But it seems they did not complete the job properly, as I instructed them to." He let out a harsh bark of laughter. "It seems to get anything done, I'll have to do it myself."
And then he lunged at me. I acted on instinct, without thinking, sprinting to the other side of the room.
"What…?" He spun around towards me, looking all the more angry and confused. "How did you get over there?" He then shook his head, as if to clear it. "No matter – you can't escape." He hefted the dagger and came at me again.
This time my whole body braced itself against his charge. When he brought the dagger to my chest, my fingers closed around his wrist and forced his hand to bury the knife into his own body.
Blood spurted out of his chest and he fell backwards, clutching at the hilt. I stared, not able to comprehend what I just did. But then something else distracted me entirely:
The smell of his blood.
It was the sweetest smell in the world, something so irresistible that it would have been a crime for me not to partake in it. As if in a trance, I moved forward, kneeling by his side. My fingertips dipped into the blood bubbling at the hole.
"Wh…Marie…" he gasped, blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth.
Slowly, I brought my fingertips to my lips and tasted human blood for the first time in my life. I knew I should have been repulsed by it, but at that point, I just didn't care anymore. Before I could blink, or before I knew what I was doing, Christophe's body was drained of blood and I felt whole.
I was a vampire.