I'm posting the final chapters tonight. I finally finished them all. I've been so scatterbrained lately it feels like that I haven't really been getting any writing done, so say yay that I finished! I hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I own nothing (other than Isobelle and Jenny andAmy and Karla and Melissa and Penelope and Anthony and I think you get the point.)
Chapter 5: Isobelle
I tossed and turned in my bed, unable to get comfortable. My non-vision vision, filled with blinding lights and pain and those voices, had drained me. I don't think a human was meant to carry these visions. I couldn't handle them. They were too strong for me. They were going to kill me.
Jenny was in her bed on the other side of the bathroom, her friends with her for a sleep over. There was blonde haired, overly perkily and cheery Amy- the human; moody, redheaded Karla- the werewolf; tall, jade-eyed Penelope- witch number one; and brown haired, good-natured Melissa- witch number two. Still, there was something wrong.
I stood from my bed, pulling the curtains back from the side of my bed and headed for the window and sat down on the window seat, looking down and out. And there was the reason I couldn't sleep.
He was handsome, I had to admit that. Still, he scared me. He was an Original... the Original! He had killed my mother at one point. I closed my curtains tight and moved back to the bed. Some way or another, I slipped in and out between the cracks of sleep until I fell over the edge.
"Today, you will be putting together your timelines on the history of vampires in Mystic Falls," Mr. Alaric Saltzman announced, "And I know Rebekah will have plenty to say on this topic." From besides the teacher's desk, I watched Caroline Forbes stifle a laugh at that. I turned back to Rebekah. She was smirking smugly.
"I'm sure I could input a little something." Alaric stood up.
"This is a group project, people. It's forty percent of your semester grade and if I see you not participating, then it will count against you." He pulled up a piece of paper. "First group, Amy, Jennifer, Penelope, and Karla. Second group, Rebekah, Melissa, Isobelle, and Anthony. Third group..." I zoned out after that. I was working with Rebekah, some vamp guy, and one of Jenny's witchy friends on this. "Okay, separate into your groups."
I moved over to Rebekah had moved to sit with Anthony, slipping my coat off and sitting down beside them. Melissa sat down besides Anthony. "So how should we do this?" she asked nervously. My notebook sat on the desk before me as I sketched absentmindedly.
"Well, we should start with drawing a line," the British girl said sarcastically. I chuckled at that.
"Let's start with some dates," Melissa started, "Um... first vamp created in...?"
"The tenth century," Rebekah and I both answered in unison.
"Ok," she wrote that down, "And first vamp in Mystic Falls?"
"Same date," Rebekah responded dryly, "Weren't you paying attention in class? Vampires were created in Mystic Falls."
I glanced at the clock. Class was over almost done. By the time he had finished showing us An Instructional History of Vampire, which was where we were getting the information for the timeline from. "We'll never be able to finish this all here," I stated.
"My house then, tomorrow, say two thirty?" Rebekah asked. Anthony nodded stoically. She turned to Melissa and I.
"Sure," Melissa answered and I shrugged. Tomorrow was Saturday. Where I went and what I did on a Saturday didn't matter to my grandparents. Heck, they'll probably be downright thrilled that I'll be out of their hair that afternoon. Quickly, she wrote out her address for both of us, handing us each a paper. On the bottom, I could see she had wrote her phone number. I filed it away in the pocket of my coat, folding it over my arm twice so it wouldn't droop on the ground and pulled my backpack on.
I walked out of the school. It was Friday afternoon and the last class of the day and no one was holding me here hostage against my will. I was a free person, and I had business to attend to.
I walked up to the doorstep and knocked and prayed to the higher beings out there that she would please be home and not Mom's brother. A young girl opened the door. She stared up at me and I felt a patch of tenderness for her. "Is your mom home?" I asked her softly.
She nodded. "Mommy?" she called, "There's a lady at the door for you."
"For the last time," the woman's voice came like the snap of a whip, "We're not interested in buying anything."
I looked up at her from the little girl, into her face. Her eyes widened as she looked at me. "I need help. I hear you're the woman to come to."
She glanced around to see if I had been followed, hissing to her daughter. "Kaitlyn, go to your room and lock your door. Don't open it unless it's me or Daddy, understand?" The little girl nodded and ran up the stairs. "Who are you?"
"My name is Isobelle. I think you can help me, in one way or another. I need a protection charm for my sister... or something for me, something of a nature that I'd rather not discuss out in the open. I promise you, I'm not a vampire." I help out my hand to her and she touched it. I knew she could sense things... every witch could. I had met one before, a long time ago, but didn't need the help then. I did now.
"You have power," she stated in surprise.
"And it's killing me. My body wasn't built to handle it. I need to know it there's a way to get rid of it or make it stop being like this." She nodded, stepping aside, and I walked in through the threshold, unstopped.
"I can make a protection charm easy. Your... interesting situation... it might take some time. Take a seat." She motioned to the dining room table and I sat down.
"Thank you for doing this." She nodded, but said nothing else.
It was two twenty when I walked up to Rebekah's house, or should I say "mansion", the next day. I knocked on the door, waiting for her to answer. I saw the car in the driveway and figured that one of my other group members was here already, waiting inside the monstrous house, probably lost, because any house this big had to be a labyrinth. One of the large doors opened up, only to reveal the hybrid known to the world as Klaus. The gears in my head clicked as they worked out everything. It made sense now. Rebekah was that Rebekah, one of the Originals vampires of this species of vampires, the magic-created kind, not the Alpha-created kind. I mean, I knew she was a vampire, but for some reason, I had never connected the dots.
"Are you everywhere?" I grumbled, pushing past him, not even waiting to be let in. "Do you stalk us or do you just like sitting outside of human girls windows at night, following them around town during the day, and showing up in places they don't expect the rest of the time?"
He closed the door, looking at me completely amused. I wanted to wipe that stupid smug smirk off his face. "Aw... did someone have a bad day?"
"Someone is about to have a really good day when someone lops your head off." I got up in his face. "I don't have any disillusions about who you are. Don't think you can fool me the way you and your family fools the rest of the world."
His brow furrowed before he spoke doubtfully, "Me?"
"Yes, you. I know exactly what you are. A murderer, a hybrid. If it weren't for you, I might have had a normal childhood. But God forbid I actually be loved by anyone, cause that's where you came into the picture. You and your godforsaken desire to build up your little hybrid freak army."
He had the audacity to look confused. "I'm not sure I follow."
"You took my mother away from me. I can't even blame her because if she wasn't so terrified of you in the first place that she had to send us away, maybe things might have been able to past for normal. And I'm not going to let you touch a hair on my sister's head if I have to chop down every tree in the forest to find a white oak to shove through the middle of you and your family."
At this, a look of recognition came across his face. "Ah! Well, I think there's been a misunderstanding. You see, we're on the same side. And I wasn't the reason that your mother hid your sister and you. Stefan, that man from the other day w-"
"I know who Stefan is," I snapped at him.
"He's the one trying to get your sister." I raised my eyebrow.
"Yes, because I so believe the guy who somehow knows where we live and was standing outside our windows last night and the night before that." I heard a voice come upstairs, or should I say, a voice was coming from up the grand staircase that was in the middle of the huge room that could have easily doubled as a ballroom. Rebekah appeared a moment later.
"Isobelle, we're working upstairs." She glanced behind me at her brother. "Nik, may I speak to you in the parlor? Now." She gave me a smile. "Go on up. I'll be right there."
I walked began to walk up the stairs, and as I reached the top landing, I could feel myself start to get dizzy. Everything was beginning to blur, like if I had opened my eyes under water, and I grasped onto the railing with a tight grip. I opened my mouth, gasping. The light was blinding. The voices, they were whispering and I could make sense of their words now, in their strange inhuman language that made me feel incredibly homesick. It made me shutter just as an intense throbbing pain went through my head as if it had been speared. Everything faded in from black.
The bright, white light filled my vision... it drowned my senses, overwhelmed me in pain. I could see him, the back of a man, a inhuman figure that seemed radiate and bathed in sheer glory. As he turned, his human face overtook my inner eyes, his blue eyes pierced me with their intensity, his dark hair startled me, but I saw past that. I knew him, he was good, he had helped me kill the vampires, demons in hell... No! my mind remembered in a panic, he was bad! He had killed people I cared about! It was only a matter of time before his sword turned on me. He was dead. He should be dead! How was he here? Why was he here? He was going to kill me! He was mad and he was going to kill me! I knew it. He was... he'd...
Elena
A scream pierced the air as I stepped inside the house. I immediately became alert, wondering where it came from. Another one... and it was coming from the stairs. I ran. My heart broke as I saw my older daughter, thrashing there, grabbing the rail as she fell and hit her head, eyes wide open, but so unseeing, staring fearfully up at the ceiling above her. She was mumbling nonsense, every other sentence wasn't in English, and what I could make out of her words were, "Get back!", "Get away from me!", and oddly enough, "Revenant!"
"Isobelle, listen to me," I cried in a panic, tried to get her attention. She was gasping and I could hear her heart pounding from her body. Somewhere in me knew that if a person had a head injury, you should keep them awake. "Isobelle... Izzy... please wake up!" She was losing body heat and blood quickly now. I could feel it even through her coat. She was gasping for air and I couldn't think clearly enough to act. Then her heart stopped, her body went slack and I hardly even had time to catch her as she began to fall, and when I laid her on the floor, she wasn't breathing, so I did the only things I could think of. I tore into my wrist, pressing the wound to her lips until they were painted red with blood. Then, with speed that only something superhuman could have, I began compressions.
"Elena, what's going on?" a voice in my ear, a hand on my shoulder, asked.
"Please help her," I begged, near hysterical. I could hear them calling nine-one-one. I could hear the operator pick up, them telling the person that an ambulance would be here in a few minutes.
"Elena, Elena, shhh," a set of arms pulled me back, "Katerina, get her out of here. Get Daniel in here now." Everything was happening around me in a flash. "Rebekah, go distract the other girl. Klaus, show the EMT's in. Anthony, go with Katerina and Elena. Get her calmed down." I was vaguely aware that is was Elijah doing the ordering. I could see Danny leaning over my daughter's lifeless body, doing CPR and using one of those defibrillators, before Katherine and Anthony pulled me away from where they were, into one of the rooms.
"Elena, you need to get a grip, now!" she yelled at me, "This won't help her."
"What if it were your daughter?" I snapped back. She recoiled, as if wounded, but I knew better. Katherine wasn't so easily hurt. But then I saw the pain in her eyes.
"I'm going to go get you some blood. Anthony, stay with her." With that, she left the room.
"Can you go get me a wet rag for my face?" I asked him a moment later when I could think clearer. Wordlessly, he nodded, going to the adjoining bathroom, but by the time he got back, I was gone.
It had been years since I had last set foot in the Salvatore boarding house. Right now, it was lit up fairly well, and when I stepped inside, I could already tell that he was home. His room didn't look any different from the last time I was in here, so long ago, with him. I could hear the shower running and I knew that it would be a matter of minutes before he emerged from the bathroom.
He hardly acknowledged me. "Katherine... get out," he said, his voice cold, but I could have gaped and drowned from the feelings of hearing his voice again. I had forgotten what it sounded like... or how blue his eyes were.
"Wrong, guess again," I replied with more confidence than I had a moment before.
Damon spun around so quickly that I hadn't seen him move. He stared at my face, studying me, as if committing my face to memory. "Elena..." he gasped.
"Hi." I wanted to smack myself in the head. Really Elena, I thought, 'hi'? That's the best you could come up with. You've waited to see this man again for almost two decades and all you can say is 'hi'?
"You're alive." He was staring at me like I was the Holy Grail or something of equal or greater value. It unnerved me. I wasn't used to it.
"Yeah," I replied, almost awkwardly, "It's been a long time."
"You look the same." He frowned at his words. "Well, not the same. Older, but not much older. Only a few years older. How? I mean, I heard rumors, but everyone thought you were dead. Everyone in this town has said the same thing, that your roommate came and said you were dead."
I rolled my eyes. "I'm pretty sure she told them that they, whoever they are, said 'it was a pretty good chance that they would never find her body.'"
"What?" He stared at me, confused and unsure of what I was saying.
"Ashley's smart and very good at wording things. Everything that's happened since I turned has been well planned out and carefully formulated before it gets acted upon, although there have been exceptions. But for any of us to make a difference, I needed to be dead to the world."
"There's these two girls. They-"
"I know," I cut him off, "They are my daughters." I risked looking up at him for a second before bowing my head. "They're yours too."
"What?" He shook his head, denying it. "That's impossible."
"We live in Mystic Falls, Damon. Impossible things are happening every day. Like my turning out to be a hybrid when that idiot left the room. You don't leave a girl who's on suicide watch by herself with hospital wires where she could do some damage to her trachea, enough to the point where she could die. But nope, let's leave her alone so she'll do exactly that because we're so much smarter than the rest of the world."
He stared at me in disbelief. "Klaus was the one to turn you?"
"Uh... yeah. But it was an accident... sort of."
"You were the wolf the other day." I blinked, cocking my head at him, and watched him pace. "The one standing between Iso- your daughters and Stefan."
"Our daughters," I corrected him. It seemed natural to say 'our', but he was rejecting the idea, probably because he went for well over a hundred years thinking he could never have a child. "Their ours, Damon, whether you believe me or not. But before you go rejecting the idea that you were able to give me children so quickly, have you actually looked at Isobelle? Your hair, your eyes, heck, she even has your nose."
He frowned at my words, walking back to the bathroom to look in the mirror for several minutes, studying his nose. "We live in a weird world," I heard him mutter from the other room. He stepped up to the bed, where I was sitting, as he reentered the room. "Do they know?" The words were breathy. I shook my head. I had never had the heart to tell them that their father had disappeared and was possibly dead. "Can I tell them?" I giggled at his expression. He looked pleased with himself and it seemed like not a day had passed since we were next to each other, whispering sweet declarations of love while he held me close. "Elena..."
I all but jumped up at him. For that moment, despite the earlier events of today, despite the fact that our daughter was dying in a hospital bed, everything was perfect.
