Disclaimer: I do not own The Vampire Diaries nor its characters. They belong to L.J. Smith, Kevin Williamson, Julie Plec, The CW Network, and whoever else.

Note/Warning: Because I love Pearl, Anna, and Harper. So here's a little take on how Pearl came to find poor Harper.

Deliver Me Unto Eternity

When Pearl took Annabelle out a safe distance from Mystic Falls to hunt, she did not expect to come home with a new addition to the family.

It was no longer safe to hunt within the town, too many of the humans had ingested vervain. It was too tricky to play guessing games; their safety wasn't worth it. So Pearl took her daughter out into the woods, well beyond the town limits of Mystic Falls.

There were battlegrounds not far from home. The perfect hunting grounds; dead and wounded scattered about, easily impressionable young men who were easy to prey on with only a light push of compulsion to make them more willing.

The fallen were Pearl's preferred prey; they were either dead or dying, and Pearl and Annabelle would make those last moments much more pleasant. While Pearl did not relish the kill, that predatory instinct inside of her did not like the restraint, the pull back from those last few sips. If she could find ways to satisfy her urges while keeping her conscious clean, she indulged.

Annabelle did not kill quite as often. She was such a delicate thing sometimes; desperate to be a normal girl, she was always a faithful daughter and happy child, evolving and changing only to adjust the times and how a girl her age should be.

It pleased Pearl that while Annabelle could and would kill, she resisted the urge for it more than her mother. It was her nature; Pearl was grateful to not have a daughter that approached this life in the same careless style as Katherine.

The smell of too much blood and swift decay became powerful as Pearl led her daughter to the clearing where the slaughtered lay scattered about. Soldiers were collecting their fallen, men were groaning in pain, and the stench of death was potent.

Annabelle shuddered a little beside her mother, and Pearl barely suppressed her own. Instinct rose to the surface, almost flooding the veins around their eyes - not yet, not yet.

Pearl waited, watching for the moment when she and Annabelle could slip in and quickly flee with a few of the fallen. When the torches and lanterns were pointed in other directions, the weary men and boys scavenging for their wounded comrades farther off. She waited until she was certain it was safe - and then they slipped over.

Many were too young or too old - too young to see such violence, and old enough that they should have a reprieve at last from such bloodshed. They did not deserve such lonesome, merciless ends - but war was always the same. Vicious, unforgiving; it cared not who won and who lost, only how many it could claim before it ended.

Annabelle searched for those already gone; the ones that smelled the least of decay.

Pearl searched for the freshest of the ones that had no chance.

That was when she found him - badly injured but not necessarily fatal. Not if help came swift. His skin was dark and smooth, his face young and too innocent for this place. He wore the dark blue of the Union, but he was trying to wake a pale boy in sullied gray.

"They're coming for us," he was whispering. "Just hold on one more minute. They'll come for us."

Pearl stopped and simply watched. She found herself mesmerized by the childlike compassion; something she so rarely saw. She knew many people that claimed they were compassionate people - but she and her daughter knew all too well that their compassion did not overcome their hatred or fear.

But this young man refused to believe his fallen enemy - a boy a year or two younger than the Union soldier - had passed.

Annabelle came up behind. Her pale, fragile face trembled with the threat of tears.

Pearl hesitated, then turned to her daughter. "Find a few of the deceased," she whispered. "Enough for three."

Annabelle dutifully nodded and moved fast; so fast she would not be noticed.

Pearl crept closer to the Union boy as he kept shaking the Confederate soldier, trying to get a response. She knelt down, and the movement finally caught the boy's attention, startling him from his devotion. She smiled tightly, sympathetically, and quietly told him, "The boy is gone. You can do nothing for him."

The soldier swallowed. He trembled, clutching at a wound in his stomach. He was fading now; his wounds were becoming fatal, help was taking too long. He studied her with a resigned expression and asked, "Have you come to deliver me?"

With a faint smirk, Pearl nodded. "In a manner of speaking, yes."