Chapter 4: Isobel

"What?" she snaps as she answers the phone.

"Well, someone's unhappy." Her voice reaches her ears and Cass fights the urge to groan.

"Katherine, it's been an incredibly hard week. I am emotionally exhausted and I'm late for school." She sighs as she pulls up in the parking lot.

"Well, in that case, I'll go to the point," Katherine says her teasing tone dropping. "I'm sending a friend over, be careful and don't mess it up."

"What friend?" she asks as she walks to where Caroline is with Bonnie. "Please, tell me it's not Isobel. Elena has gone through enough, Katherine."

"Don't tell me you like the little bitch." She snaps and Cass rolls her eyes at her jealousy.

"Careful, your jealousy is starting to show." She mentions lazily, straightening her bag on her shoulder and waving at the two human girls near her.

"Cass, you're here! We have so much to do and I want to talk to you about the parade." Caroline squeals when she sees Cass approaching.

"Who's that?" Katherine laughs. "Did you become one of those queen bees everyone follows around?"

"Goodbye, Katherine." She hangs up before Katherine has time to continue the teasing.

"Ok, so I'm thinking 1800's for this year's parade. What do you think?" Caroline asks once she reaches both Caroline and Bonnie.

She groans as she sits down on the table, the world is definitely against her lately. The 1800's, of course. Caroline couldn't be obsessed with the 50's, could she?

"I believe it's great," Bonnie says. "You know? All 'gone with the wind' style."

"Of course, yeah, I love it." She admits and smiles when Caroline's face completely lights up.

"That's great because I need to ask you a huge favor." She starts, giving Cass her best puppy eyes. "I'm minus a girl for the court and I need you to fill her space."

"What? What about Amy?" she asks, her eyes roaming around the cafeteria for a way out.

"She's freaked out and wants nothing to do with the Miss Mystic Falls court. Please, I'm begging you here." Caroline begs, putting her hands together.

Then Cass' eyes fall on Stefan, Elena and Alaric who signals her to follow them. She starts to get up and brings her bag.

"Fine, I'll do it. I've got to go, now." She apologizes once she gets up. "See you in English." She mutters before walking to Alaric's classroom.

…

Ten minutes later, they're all sitting in silence waiting for Damon to come. Elena is staring off to space and Alaric is doing pretty much the same while Stefan and Cass are sitting together trying to understand what's happening. She couldn't believe Katherine would send Isobel to do what she wanted to do.

"Sorry, I'm late." Damon enters the room. "Dog ate my… never mind." He finishes lamely when he sees everyone's somber look. "What's up with the furrowed brows?" he asks, frowning.

"I saw Isobel last night." Alaric states.

"She's here in town?" he asks and Alaric nods. Damon's eyes immediately go to Elena who slowly lifts her eyes to meet his.

"Did you ask about John? Is she working with him?" Damon demands.

"No." Alaric shakes his head.

"No, she isn't?" he demands.

"I didn't ask." Alaric clarifies.

"What about the invention?" Damon starts to walk toward Alaric as he speaks. "The tomb vampires?"

"I don't know." Alaric looks down and so does Stefan.

"Did words completely escape you?" Damon exclaims and Cass deliberately takes Stefan's hand comfortingly.

"I was too preoccupied with my dead vampire wife to ask any questions, Damon." Alaric snaps back.

"What does she want?" Damon asks around the room.

"She wants to see me." Elena speaks for the first time since Alaric dropped the bomb on them.

His eyes cloud with concern for a second as they lock eyes. "You don't have to see her if you don't want to."

"I don't really have a choice." Elena answers, hugging herself for a second.

"She… has threatened to go on a killing spree." Cassandra explains, bringing his attention to her for a minute.

"And you guys are not okay with this." He raises an eyebrow mockingly.

"I wanna do it, if not then I'll regret it." Elena shakes her head, determined.

"Lena, that is a very bad idea," Cass says, getting up and walking towards her.

Elena looks at her questioningly and she falters on her step for a second. How do you tell a girl that her mother is a monster? That Damon is a saint compared to her? She'll break Elena's heart and she doesn't want to.

"She's not like us." Cassandra moves her hands around, pointing between the two vampires and herself.

"I don't care. I want to meet her." Elena repeats.

The other share an unconvinced look before sighing and giving in. of course she'll meet Isobel.

…

Later the same day they all go to The Mystic Grill where Elena is to meet Isobel; only Stefan goes inside and the other two vampires, plus Alaric, have to stay outside.

"We should be there," Damon says as he paces back and forth. Cass rolls her eyes from where she's leaning into a bench.

"Isobel made it clear we couldn't be there," Alaric says next to her and Damon turns around.

"I'm not gonna kill her on a crowded restaurant." He protests.

"Of course you are." She snorts as she kicks some gravel on the ground with her heel.

"You won't kill her, end of," Alaric says. "She's my wife." Cass turns to face him and raises an eyebrow until he realizes his mistake. "Was my wife." He corrects himself. "The woman I married isn't there; whoever that is, is cold."

"She turned off her humanity." Cass shrugs.

"See, I don't get that. Stefan's a good guy, you are a psycho but I still see something human in you, and you…" he looks at his student who is looking at him curiously. "You are as human as you can get, except for the heart-tearing hobby of yours."

"You met me in a good year. I'm not usually like this." The redhead smiles. "You can turn it off, like pushing a button."

"Stefan wants to feel the humanity and I'm guessing that little red here is the same," Damon tells the teacher and receives a glare from Cass.

"The problem is that a vampire's instinct is not to feel." Cass adds, trying to make him understand.

"Isobel chose the easy road, no regret, no pain, no guilt." Damon continues as he leans on the bench in the other side of Cass.

"If you could turn all that off, wouldn't you?" she asks Alaric, really curious.

"Have any of you?" Alaric asks back, avoiding the question.

"Of course I have, why you think I'm so fun to be around?" Damon answers right away as he gets up and starts pacing again.

"Once or twice." Cassandra answers after some thinking over.

The truth is she never really had the need to turn it off, she was cold by nature when she was human; she usually didn't feel guilt and she could walk around pain and ignore it like it was her most valuable skill. So when she became a vampire and her every emotion heightened, she was surprised there was no guilt what-so-ever. If anything she was more cold-hearted than before; with time she learned to control it and slowly she became more human. She stared to feel a little bit of pity for her victims and started to do something that surprised every supernatural creature in the world who had heard about her: she showed mercy.

By the time she was 300 years old, she was as human as a vampire in a human blood diet could get. She loved, she pitied, she befriended, she hated and she even comforted but when she wanted she could turn into the fear-inducing monster she was at the beginning. In other words, she was perfect. Emily herself had said that. Wait, Emily hated vampires, all but herself, and she wanted to erase them from Mystic Falls.

"Bonnie? Can I borrow Emily's grimore? It's important," She says into the phone once the brunette answers.

…..

"You called, I came. What's up?" Elena asks as she enters the biology lab where Bonnie and Cass have their noses stuck into a book.

"You gotta see this." Bonnie gasps as she shows Elena the grimore.

"That's the device Isobel wants," she says, amazed.

"I thought it was familiar so I looked it up." Cass explains her. "Jonathan Gilbert never actually succeeded in inventing anything; it was all spelled by Emily or me. I did the rings, and the vampire compass. She took care of this."

She signals to the painting of the rounded piece and a little wooden box.

"This is a weapon against vampires, Elena. I don't understand why Isobel could want it." Bonnie adds, shaking her head.

"I have to tell Stefan," Elena says, running a hand through her hair.

"I'll go with you." Cassandra nods, quickly following her.

Outside they both part ways so they can find Stefan faster and Elena unfortunately runs into no other than Isobel.

"What are you doing here?" Elena gasps, taking a step back.

"I'm your mother Elena. I want to be involved in your life," she says without emotion, making fear slowly creep into Elena's veins.

"I don't want you in my life." She snaps, trying to control her fear.

"I get that. You already have a lot of people in your life that you care about. But I've been studying, let's see if I get this right." She smirks a little and turns around to watch the crowd.

"There's witchy friend Bonnie, I'm gonna stay away from that one." She muses as she looks over at Bonnie who is walking by a few meters away.

"Jeremy, sad little brother Jeremy." She then points to Jeremy who is talking on the phone by a corner. Elena follows Isobel's eyes with scared features, shaken by how much she knows.

"Cassandra, of course." Isobel looks over at Cass, who is talking with Bonnie about something by the school entrance. "She's a good friend, right?"

"And there's Caroline, obnoxious Caroline. Got all my info from her, she didn't know who I was and yet, she wouldn't stop yapping." Isobel raises an eyebrow at Elena but Elena's eyes are trained on Caroline who waves from where she is fixing the Miss Mystic Falls boat. "Let's not forget about Matt. Childhood friend, ex boyfriend, blondie's new boyfriend. A lot of connections there." Elena turns to look at her mother and shakes her friends.

"He's not involved in this." She snaps at Isobel.

"He's involved with you." Isobel answers like it's the obvious answer. Somehow, it really is.

"Leave, now." Elena demands, trying hard to stop her voice from trembling.

"No." Isobel deadpans. "I've friends too. See that man?" she points to a blonde guy near the float. "He's Frank and he noticed the axle's a little rusty and if you put just enough pressure…" Isobel trails off at the same time Frank deliberately jumps into the float and the float falls down, catching Matt's arm under it and breaking it.

The sound of bone's snapping and Elena's shout brings Cassandra's attention, who automatically looks over to the commotion that's taking place around Matt. Bonnie gasps and they both run to Matt. Tyler Lockwood—who is super hot, in Cass' humble opinion.—and some other guys she doesn't know are trying to lift the float but it doesn't even budge until Stefan helps them, obviously using his supernatural strength. Cassandra runs to Matt's side in a second.

"Matt? Matt, let me see that," She tells him.

"Cassandra? No it's fine." He shakes his head, keeping his arm close to his torso.

"Don't be ridiculous." He reluctantly shows her his arm and she touches it slightly with her delicate fingers. She takes out her phone and calls 911.

"991, what's your emergency?" the operator says.

"I need an ambulance. There's a 17 years old boy with a fracture in his right arm. The radius is snapped in half and I think the ulna might or not be scratched, too." She tells him and ignores Matt's surprised look.

"Oh, my god! Matt." Caroline takes Cass' place as she gets up to continue to talk to the operator.

"I'm in Mystic Falls High School." She presses the matter.

"An ambulance should be there in about fifteen minutes." Cassandra groans and hangs up, knowing that's way too much time.

"The ambulance will take 15 minutes to get here." She informs them and they all start to debate who's going to take Matt to the hospital. She's about to volunteer when something stops her.

"Jeremy! Jeremy!" Elena calls out and both Cassandra and Stefan look around to find that Jeremy is nowhere to be found.

…..

"Where's the device?" Bonnie asks as they all sit in Alaric's classroom.

"Damon has it and there's no way he's giving it up." Cass shakes her head and looks out the window.

"We'll go to him," Elena says, her tone bordering in desperation. "Cass will talk to him, right?"

All eyes go to her and she locks eyes with Stefan for a moment. He lifts an eyebrow at her but she simply looks at him, using him as a distraction rather than an object to examine. Why would he give it to her? There's nothing that really assures them that he will and if she knows Damon at all, which she likes to believe she does, then the only way to convince him to do such a crazy thing would be if someone incredibly important asks him to. Important as in Katherine important.

"I think you should ask him to," She tells Elena seriously and before Elena can protest she adds: "But he won't give it over if it's dangerous to vampires."

"What if it isn't? You're a witch you can remove the spell," Elena tells her.

"No." she shakes her head. "She probably wants to use it against the tomb vampires, if we stay out of the way as in, in the boarding house we won't be in trouble."

"what?" elena gasps.

"Yes, Elena. It's not like she'll use it against us, not if she's working for Katherine, we just give it to her and stay out of the way." She explains.

"Why are you saying this?" Elena asks, exasperated.

"Because I want them dead, ok? I want every single one of them dead." She finally snaps.

They look at her for a moment before Elena and Stefan's eyes go to Bonnie who nods once. After convincing Damon to give Elena the device and assuring him that Bonnie could indeed remove the original spell, they agreed to meet with Isobel in the square.

…

Elena is pacing around the square waiting for Isobel to come, when she feels someone behind her. Turning around, she comes face to face with her biological mother.

"Where's the device?" she demands.

"Where's Jeremy?" Elena asks back.

"Do you really think I came alone?" Isobel asks Elena and tilts her head. Elena looks behind her to find a Frank and another woman looking at her.

"Do you think I came alone?" Elena retaliates.

Isobel turns around to see how Damon, Cassandra and Stefan walk up behind her.

Isobel rolls her eyes and turns to Elena. "For god's sake, call home and ask to speak to Jeremy."

Elena does as she's told and lets out a breath of relief when Jeremy answers the phone. "I'll be there soon, ok?" she tells her brother.

Once she hangs up and puts her phone in her pockets, she turns to Isobel and says:
"you weren't going to hurt him."

"No, I was going to kill him." Isobel pouts as she takes a step forward, earning a baffled look from Elena. "Don't look for any redeeming qualities from me. I don't have any." She added monotonously.

"You took a risk with Damon, how did you know he was going to give the device to me?" Elena asks, trying to change the subject.

"Because he's in love with you." She shrugged.

The pang of heartache that one sentence sends down Cass' chest is enough to make her close her eyes; Stefan looks down and at the same time reaches for her hand, bringing her closer. This is too much for her, she hates it when history repeats itself and that's exactly what's happening here. She squeezes Stefan's hand and forces her eyes open, focusing on breathing in and out. Damn heighten emotions.

Elena watches all this and her eyes go to Damon to find that he's oblivious to the exchange next to him and is finding the tree next to him very interesting, her eyes go back to Cassandra and her boyfriend and she studies the way Cass leans slightly into Stefan and that's when it clicks: Cass is in love with Damon. She doesn't know how she could've missed it before, the way she defends him, the way she gets every time Katherine and Damon together are brought into the conversation. It's obvious to her that Stefan already knows and, judging by the way Stefan's always talk about her, he's always known and he's been her shoulder to cry on.

Elena looks at her biological mother and walks angrily toward her, she forces the device into her hands with as much strength as she can muster.

"Thank you for being a monumental disappointment. It leaves the memory of my mom completely intact." She spats at her.

She's angry at her for everything. For appearing, for kidnapping Jeremy, for hurting her friend with her words, for everything. For a second, it looks like Isobel is actually affected by Elena's words but her mask is composed in the blink of an eye.

"As long as you have a Salvatore brother in each arm, you'll be doomed. Katherine and Cassandra were smart, they got out… or maybe only Katherine was smart. But we all know you're not Katherine." She adds as a second thought. "Goodbye, Elena." And with that she disappears.

Elena immediately runs to Stefan, who lets go of Cass' hand to hug his girlfriend. She looks at Damon for a second before focusing on hugging Stefan and that's when Cass realizes that it's time to go home or she'll break.