After a bit of convincing, Pearl had finally allowed Florencia to accompany Anna to Mystic Falls Hospital for more blood bags.

Although she got what she wanted and was freely walking down the streets of her hometown, Florencia felt like a child whenever Anna didn't let her stray to far from her supervision. It was rather annoying, but she didn't argue and decided to enjoy the fresh air.

Dressed in a new black, long-sleeved dress and a pair of matching high-heel shoes, she thought about how much the fashion had changed since the 19th century, among other things, of course.

She'd been introduced to some technology at the house, but her real problem was the 21st century slang.

Anna was teaching her the difference between 'LOL' and 'LMFAO' when the brunette's attention was diverted to a cute boy standing outside the town's bar & grill restaurant.

After he acknowledged Anna with a smile, Florencia turned to her with a smirk, "Who is that young man? He sure seems to have a liking towards you."

Anna waved at the brown-haired boy as he entered the Mystic Grill and looked at her, "Remember, you're a seventeen year-old girl in the 21st century, Renzi." Florencia took notice of the name Pearl and Anna insisted she call herself by, as it would help her keep a low profile now that she was a vampire. "Women today wear pajama pants and booty shorts to go grocery shopping. Try 'he likes you' or 'he's into you' instead," Anna smiled, but Florencia could tell her friend was becoming quite irritated, having to explain things like a mother would to a three-year-old child every five minutes. "Anyway, I, uh have to get something so take this and I'll see you at home- straight home. The rest are probably hungry so it won't take long before they go out and feed; you need to get there before they do."

"Wait, Anna," the redhead looked down at the satchel filled with blood bags and looked up again, but her vampire friend was already halfway down the street on her way to the Mystic Grill. With a sigh, Florencia put the satchel's strap over her head and across her torso and finished saying to no one in particular, "What are booty shorts?"


Storm clouds settled upon the woods and by the time Florencia reached the vampires' household, she was drenched in rain. It didn't occur to her to use her new vampire speed, as she was still getting used to her abilities, until it was too late and her soaked black dress already clung to her like a second skin.

"Miss Brannon," Harper smiled when he answered the door for her and waved her in.

Before the young man rushed to get her a towel to dry herself with, Florencia told him, "You're no longer my stable boy, Harper. Please call me Renzi."

He simply nodded in agreement as she handed him the satchel of blood bags and followed him to the kitchen.

"Where's everyone?" She questioned, grabbing the towel from Harper and drying her wet hair with it.

A few of the tomb vampires were hanging in the living room, but most of them were nowhere to be seen.

An uneasy look crossed Harper's dark-brown eyes as he stopped pouring blood into a glass and turned around to face her, "They took advantage of the storm and left. I tried stopping them but that didn't do any good."

Remembering Anna's words, Florencia figured they wouldn't be so stupid to run around killing people and she tried shrugging off some of her worries, "Perhaps they wanted to stretch their legs."

"And fangs," Harper quipped, but Florencia agreed.

Was she really stupid to think a group of bloodthirsty vampires would just go out to take a stroll in the park? No, of course not. Whatever Frederick and Company were out doing, it wasn't good.

"Frederick was carrying a pair of stakes," the dark-skinned vampire told her after having a drink of his glass of blood. He offered Florencia some, but she was too worried to even think about her hunger as he finished, "I don't think they went out just to grab a bite, that's for sure."

At his words, she remembered how angry Frederick had been last night, vengeful for his wife's murder, and downright wrathful. Whatever went down last night when they disappeared, it had been bad. Beth Anne had been killed and it was obvious now Frederick had rallied up a group of vampires to go after her killer.

"Beth Anne and Frederick didn't just go into town to 'kick up their heels,' did they?" Florencia slowly realized. She turned to Harper and could tell he was hiding something. "Do you know who they went after?"

"It is not my place to say, Renzi," he avoided her gaze and that made her all the more suspicious.

"What is it with all this secrecy?" New to the feeling of her heightened emotions, she couldn't help but raise her voice in frustration. "First, Pearl gives me a daylight ring but tells me I can't step outside. When I finally do, Anna keeps me on a leash. And now, I'm not allowed to know something that everyone else does! Why am I the only one in the dark, here? Harper, what is Pearl keeping from me?"

"As you said, I am no longer your stable boy; I do not have to answer to you." His words were harsh but he worried of what Pearl would do if she found out he opened his mouth.

Florencia took in a sharp breath and slowly nodded, "You are right, Harper. My apologies, it seems I've asked the wrong person."

She left the kitchen in path to her room and get a change of clothes. Going up the stairs, she quickly turned around and walked towards the front door when she heard it open. Frederick and the rest of the vampires stepped inside.

"Where were y-," Florencia stopped abruptly at who she saw Frederick's group drag in.

"It appears we have some company, sweetheart," Frederick smirked and dropped Beth Anne's killer to the floor.

She fell down on her knees with the unconscious young man. Her trembling hands held his bloodied face, and she didn't dare breathe as she pushed back the wet strands of brown hair that covered part of his features.

"Stefan?" She finally whispered. Her wide eyes searched the vampire over and over again, but, even dripping wet, muddied, bloodied, and unconscious, she didn't doubt it was him. Remembering all the moments she had spent with the Salvatore brothers, she grew up with him, she knew him.

Frederick and his friends didn't let her ask any more questions as they pulled her up and continued to tie him.

"Make sure to set the table for one more." Frederick picked Stefan up by the nape with leather-gloved hands and watched as the small redhead fought against the grip of the other two vampires. With a smug smile, he finished, "Damon Salvatore will join us, soon."

"What are you going to do?" Florencia's eyes widened further at his words but she couldn't dwell on them for long. Her full attention was on Frederick, who dragged Stefan to the basement by a rope that burned his tied wrists with vervain.

"Let him go!" A vicious growl escaped her and she used her vampire strength to free herself from the bruising hold of his men.

Being much older than her and therefore faster, Frederick took a syringe filled with vervain and injected it into her chest. In a second, Florencia's body weakened and she fell unconscious on the floor.

"Take her, too," he ordered the other pair of vampires and adjusted the black glove on his right hand. He had expected for her to put up a fight, and he would kill her, too, if she got in the way of his revenge. After his wife's death, he was prepared to kill anyone who did.


Mystic Falls, VA
1864

Katherine had left Florencia beside her father's dead body when she woke up. It was a cruel thing to do. The blood from his neck wounds was still fresh and its metallic smell intoxicating, leaving her to inch closer to her father as she cried sorrowful tears.

She screamed at herself to stop but the growing vampire fangs in her mouth didn't listen. She tried to fight her hands as they reached for the blood on his throat, but she had always been weak and small. The hunger throbbing through the protruding veins under her eyes overwhelmed her entirely, and she never stood a chance against it.

Her trembling fingers dove into the opened bite on the side of her father's neck and felt the warmth of his blood, a stark contrast with her cold skin. It couldn't have been but a few minutes since Katherine had ripped into his neck like the monster she was. His body still clung to the last traces of heat, Florencia realized when she gently brought him to her chest and wrapped her arms around his lifeless body.

"I'm so sorry, Father," she sobbed, not being able to fight the pain from her fangs as they ached for blood. Her bloodied fingers grabbed the back of his suit and clutched tightly while she tried to steady her breathing. "I c-can't- I can't fight it," she cried to him, nuzzling at his wounded neck before she parted her chapped lips and sank her fangs in.

It was horrible- She was horrible to feel her father's blood running down her throat and her skin warm up while she dug deeper into his neck. She was a monster for enjoying it even a little.

And that's what Giuseppe Salvatore saw when he burst in the study with a pistol holstered at his hip. A demon wearing Ricard's daughter's face as she viciously fed off of him before she stopped and turned to him.

"Please," she exhaled and Giuseppe didn't think twice before pulling out his pistol and put a wooden bullet into her head.

He saw her bloodshot eyes, her mouth dripping blood, but he failed to see her pain, her guilt, her grief.

Florencia did not beg for him to stop, but begged for him to shoot.


Mystic Falls, VA
Present Day

Vervain-soaked ropes burned her skin when she awoke in the house's basement. The vervain in her system didn't help either. Florencia held back tears, feeling as weak as that night and in serious need of feeding.

"Florencia…? Is- Is it you, Flor?" Her eyes followed Stefan's questioning whispers and her breath faltered once again at the sight of him.

How long had it been- a hundred-and-something years, since they had seen each other?

She smiled through the pain, "It is me, Stefan. It's me." Silent tears streamed down her cheeks, remembering the countless days of her burning from the inside out, sitting and desiccating in a tomb, and the only thing that helped ease that pain had been the image of Stefan- of both Damon and him- living the rest of their lives, if not happily, at least as humans.

But with him standing upright, bare feet skimming the floor's surface, and arms tied up by vervain-soaked ropes which burned his wrists, it seemed fate had planned something completely different for them.

"I thought you were dead-," he met her widened green eyes, scavenging his brain with the memory of Damon and him going back to the Brannon Manor and his heart breaking from what they found. "Your home was set on fire and burned down during the battle. There was nothing left but ashes, Flor," his voice broke with the mention of her name and he gulped back the lump forming in his throat. "We thought you were dead."

Although she had rather been, Florencia didn't admit that to him. It was all Katherine's fault, but knowing him, Stefan would find a way to blame himself, and she wished to spare him this much.

"I'm not," she reassured. "I was forced to turn into, um, into this, and then dumped in the tomb under Fells Church with the others." Se deviated her eyes from him, and it didn't take a genius to realize the pain and anger buried deep inside, raw hatred for the vampire that had damned her for an eternity. For whom Stefan had already figured out to be Katherine, even if Florencia kept it from him.

"I'm so sorry-"

"Stefan," she quieted him down and shook her head, "it's not your fault. I'm not dead- you and Damon are not dead, but we do need to get out of here before they kill us."

"That won't be happening, sweetheart," Frederick sauntered into the room, pulling on his black leather gloves with a malicious grin, "although I'd like to see you try."

He dipped his gloved hands into a bucket near Florencia and brought up a rope dripping with water. "Vervain on the ropes," he told them before he walked to her and tied the rope around her chest.

The redhead screamed at the agonizing contact against her arms and chest.

Frederick only tortured her to get a rise out of Stefan and it seemed to worked, as Stefan writhed in his own ropes, not caring for the pain they caused.

"Stop! Let her go!" He shouted furiously but the vampire only chuckled when he turned to him.

"That's gotta sting," Frederick nodded, listening to Florencia as she tried holding back her cries. "Speaking of…" He picked up an eye dropper from the table a few feet away from the Salvatore brother, filled with liquid vervain that he emptied onto the defiant vampire's eyes.

Florencia cried more tears while Stefan shut his eyes tight, groaning and screaming as his eyes burned. She picked herself up as far from the chair as she could and strained forward to Frederick, the vervained ropes cutting further into her skin, "You son of a bitch, if Pearl doesn't kill you I will!"

"You naive girl," he was quick to laugh at her face, "how stupid are you to believe Pearl isn't part of this? She's here for revenge, just as I and everyone that has been left for dead in that damn tomb. And you," he pointed a stake at her chest and Florencia slowly leaned back in her chair, "you are nothing but leverage."

"What are you talking about?" She looked at him, confused, but all he replied with was a stake driven through Stefan's bare back before he left.


She was going to get Stefan out of here, even if it cost her a hand. Vampires could heal back their hands, right?

She prayed her bottom lip healed, too, as it bled from chewing down on it in an attempt to stop her screams from waking Stefan up.

He had fallen into unconsciousness a few minutes ago, after the pain of the stake in his back and it grazing his heart had been too much to bear.

She silently worked on loosening the rope around her right hand, which had been the badly tied one, but the pain that came with each wriggle slowed her down. When she finally loosened the rope enough to slip her bloodied hand off, the relief that washed over her tired her even more.

However much she struggled to free herself, Florencia was determined, staggering over to where Stefan began to gain consciousness.

"Flor, what-?" Stefan blinked, feeling her hand on his shoulder before he saw it all cut up and bleeding, the vervain in her system slowing down the healing process.

"Shhh, it's okay," her voice was weak and, if it weren't for her proximity, Stefan wouldn't have heard her. "I'm going to pull out the stake," she said from behind him. "Just try not to make a lot of noise? I heard someone standing guard outside the door earlier."

Stefan nodded, preparing himself for the eruption of pain, and Florencia wrapped her left hand around the end of the stake. Her injured one feebly held onto Stefan's shoulder as her own strength began to fade, but not before she pulled out the stake.

Stefan clenched his jaw tight and pulled his head back at the wave of pain, though he kept quiet. Florencia quickly grabbed a knife from the table and began to cut away at the strand of rope she could reach.

She was able to set Stefan free but she didn't know if she had enough strength to get him out of the house, not when she needed the support of a table to keep her standing.

"Hey, you okay?" Although Stefan wasn't that much better off, he took her in his arms before she collapsed on the ground.

"Sorry, Stefan, I fear I may not be cut out for torture," she tried to smile but it only caused a tear to slip down her face as she retreated safely against his chest and closed her eyes in defeat.


A/N: Okay so I'm back, maybe? I don't know but I had this chapter just sitting there collecting 'dust' in my files since two years ago, and I think it was time to put it up. Even though I haven't updated in a very very very long time, I just want to thank everyone for the sweet and nice reviews you guys have left anyway! I'll admit that sometimes I came back to read them when I was feeling down or whatever and they have always warmed my heart and brought a smile to my face, so thank you so much! I do apologize if my writing seems a bit off in this chapter compared to the last two, but it's been a while since I've gotten into the headspace of this fic, though I tried polishing it as best as I could. Any constructive criticism on your part is welcomed, though!

Now I can't be sure when the next update of Stained With Sin will be, but I assure you that I will not delete this fic no matter how long I've left it abandoned!

As always, thank you so much for reading/reviewing/following/adding this fic to your favorites! I hope you lovelies have a good day/night! :)