Chapter Three: Little Girl

Sometime after Katy left, Stefan had come home early at the behest of Lexie blowing up his phone with calls and text messages. By the time he'd got there she'd drank some blood and healed from the vervain. Yet she still looked pale and terrified at the thought that anything could've happened to Katy by now. It had been nearly two hours since she'd run off.

She paced the room where Katy's dufflebag still was. Stefan sat on the bed and tried to figure out what to do next.

"What about the police station? Wouldn't she have gone there? If she was afraid of me? What if she's there right now telling them everything?"

"No. Doubtful." Stefan said, "Even on foot, she'd already be there by now and we'd know. Sheriff Forbes would've already driven her back."

"What did I do?!" She cried, her voice sounding truly hurt, "Why is she so afraid of me?"

Standing up to comfort his best friend, Stefan told her, "Lexie. Katy just lost her family, her entire life is turned upside down and now she finds out she's living with vampires."

"But I didn't do anything wrong. She still hates me, anyway!"

"I don't think you're the problem at all, Lex. You're not the reason she's scared."

Distressed and on the verge of tears, Lexie sat down on a chair with her head in her hands.

"We need to call the police! I can't go outside till nightfall and by then she could be in real danger!"

"Nope. We're not doing that." A sarcastic voice announced.

They stood up to see Damon casually leaning against the doorframe. He looked somewhere between amused and annoyed at the two. His usual smirk painting his face as his next few words rang through the air.

"I'm curious. How did the two of you, after centuries of living, still manage to get outsmarted by a child? A twelve-year-old girl? I've gotta hear this story."

"Damon, this is not funny."

"You're right, Stefan, it's not." Damon said, the amusement no longer clouding his face. "Because after all the trouble I went through to get this kid here. Your little buddy had to screw it all up."

"What is she doing here in the first place?!" Lexie demanded.

"That's my business. For now, I need to find her before the Sheriff knows she's missing. Now what does this kid look like?"

"You are not going to be the one to find her."

"Tick-tock. Tick-tock. We're burning daylight." Damon mocked. "Every second you fight me on this is a second she's somewhere off in the universe and could bring back a town of pitch-fork and stake-wielding vampire hunters. Description. NOW."

Lexie glanced angrily at the sun outside, still high in the sky. She still had to carefully avoid the windows that weren't closed around the house. She would've much preferred if Stefan was the one going out to find Katy, but there didn't seem to be a choice right now.

"She's fair. Auburn braids, just up to here." She gestured to just below the top of her rib-cage, "Blue-grey eyes."

"What was she wearing?"

"Um, blue-jean jacket and dark pants, I think. She had some tan Uggs she used to hold a stake when she was running away."

Damon nodded, "No accounting for the kid's style but she's crafty. Or at least, she's smarter than the two of you combined. Maybe there is hope for the education system."

Lexie was about to lunge at Damon if Stefan hadn't held her back, his brother only looking on cheerfully.

"Laters." Faster than lightning, Damon was out the door.

Stefan let Lexie go and assured her, "I'll find her. I promise she'll be safe."

Lexie looked tearful, "I haven't seen her since she was a baby. Fresh and new." Her voice cracked, "Please, make sure she's okay."

"She doesn't know you, Lex. She's a kid who lost her family. I'm sure she's just confused and on edge." Stefan consoled. Though he had to ask a question that had been bugging him for a while now. "Are you sure it's even her?"

Lexie gave Stefan a look, "If I wasn't sure before she tried to roofie me with vervain, I'm positive now. How many little girls named Katherine Weston toting stakes and vervain do you know?"

He smiled slightly, "Not many. I just better find her before Damon does and she tries something similar. Not that I wouldn't love to see that."

The two hugged quickly before Stefan sped out of the room to follow his brother. All the while, Lexie had no choice but to wring her hands and wait for them to return with the little girl she wanted nothing more than to see safe and sound, again.

Walking over to her own bag of stuff she pulled out a small, old envelope from a zippered section. It was full of polaroids from over ten years ago. They featured herself, a couple, and a newborn.

It was just when the 90's had ended, so Lexie had been dressed in one of those pink and blue stripped, neon tops over light designer jeans outfits. Her long blonde hair tied with a braid down her shoulder.

The couple were very light and dark. The woman was about as tall as Lexie with similarly long hair, only bright red and wavy. Her dark grey eyes were thin and narrow. Normally a little intimidating, but they turned friendly when she smiled-like in the photo. She had on a shapeless blue dress with only a belt over her middle. Lexie recalled how much she'd hated that dress on Sarah. Time and time again telling her it didn't show off her amazing hourglass figure properly. But she'd just given birth at the time, so there was no arguing with her about how comfortable it was. The man in the photo was about a head shorter than the women, with black jheri curls that wouldn't be tamed. They would've hung in his blue eyes if not for the thin spectacles he wore, which acted as a barrier. The black sweater with the white collar poking out underneath somehow made him look even more pale than he was, but it did do well to fill out his twig-like frame.

The baby wasn't really distinguishable to the naked eye. In the photo, she just looked like a little, red lump of baby fat with especially large eyes poking out. Blue-grey, like a marble cake mix of her parents' traits. Baby Katherine Margaret Weston.

She wasn't as plump as the picture made her look. In reality, Katy had been born almost 2 months early. Even after being allowed to come home she was tiny. When you held her, she felt like the most fragile little thing in the world. It made anyone who touched her act especially gentle with the newborn.

Looking at that picture, with the proud parents, it was no doubt that the little girl who'd shown up that day was the baby in the photo. She still looked like a hodge-podge of her family. Yet she clearly didn't just inherit physical traits from them. Katy also inherited her father's quick mind and her mother's even quicker temper. Based on how she ran away without even a bit of recognition for who Lexie was.

"I guess it was too much to ask that they tell you about me, huh?" The woman said miserably, holding the photos to her chest.