Disclaimer: See prologue
AN: I haven't abandoned this AT ALL... i just broke 2 laptops in 2 weeks, then my dad screwed up his desktop and I've been fixing that lately... so, I'll do what I can for now, considering everything is on my old laptops...
... ... ...
When you're gone,
The pieces of my heart are missing you,
When you're gone,
The face I came to know is missing too.
And when you're gone,
The Words I need to hear to always get me through the day and make it okay,
I miss you
She was warm, so warm.
She could feel herself sweating and tried to kick the blankets off her but couldn't get her legs to move. She tried to move her arms but everything was so heavy and she was getting hotter by the moment. She finally forced her eyes open, quickly closing them again at the bright light. She let out a small moan, and then heard someone call her name. She tried to answer but her mouth still wasn't working. So she opened her eyes again and finally realized that the brightness wasn't a light but a fire and that's why she was so hot.
The realization sent her into a panic and she shot up, looking around wildly. The movement caused more pain in her head and without thinking, she leaned to the side and began retching.
"Mackenzie. Redbird."
She looked over to see Damon there, trying to push himself to his knees.
"Damon?" She rasped out, "what's going on?"
"They're trying to kill all the Vampires."
"I'm not one." She said.
"But you tried to help one and something tells me John doesn't care who gets caught in the crossfire. You need to get out."
"How?" She started coughing from all the smoke. "we're trapped."
He tried getting to his feet but fell down again when a beam fell on top of him. Kenzie pushed herself to her hands and knees and crawled over to him, feebly trying to help him as he pushed it away.
"Just go." He yelled at her.
"I can't, I don't think I can even stand. We're going to die, aren't we?" She asked and he couldn't help but glance at her to notice she didn't seem overly worried about her upcoming fate.
He'd worry about it later, right now he needed to find a way to get her out of there.
"Look." She cried. "It's dying down." She began coughing harder and it only made the pain in her head worse causing her to fall to the side.
Damon looked to where she was pointing, seeing the fire on the stairs had died down and he reached over and picked Kenzie up, who looked on the verge of passing out.
"Damon."
He looked up to see his brother there and he pushed himself to his feet, Kenzie in his arms as Stefan reached them, grabbing Damon by one arm and helping him up the stairs using their vampire speed. Behind them, the stairs burst into flames again.
They exited the building and Kenzie could hear Elena and Bonnie calling her name as Damon collapsed onto the pavement with her still in his arms.
"What was she doing down there?" Elena asked.
"She tried to save me when your uncle started that device so he took care of her."
"And he knew she was human?"
"Yes."
Kenzie weakly struggled in Damon's arm and seeming to realize what she needed, gently turned her over as she vomited all over the ground again.
"We need to get her to a hospital." Elena cried.
"We can't let them know we were in the building." Stefan replied.
"I'll take care of her." Damon answered.
"You're weak, let me help." Stefan begged.
The elder brother stood up now, growing stronger by the moment as the vervain left his system. Kenzie was completely passed out now, her long red curls draped over his arm, partially singed and covered in ash.
"Deal with the crowd, I'll take her out of here before anyone notices."
He was gone before anyone could protest.
… … …
The next time Kenzie woke up, she was still in a mass amount of pain. She rolled over, not quite realizing where she was. She was in a girls room but this was in no way her room. She briefly wondered if she had ended up dying in that burning building but she could spy pictures of Elena and Stefan on the bedside table and she glanced around, wondering how she ended up there. Had someone saved her? Why hadn't anyone taken her to the hospital yet? Better yet, why had no one cleaned her up? She was grimy and covered in ash and really needed a bathroom.
She tried to sit up but the pain in her head stopped her and she weakly collapsed back onto the bed. She contemplated calling for Elena to help when she heard voices coming down the hall and she could just barely make them out.
"Anna said that vampires don't have to feel pain; that they could turn it off if they shut out their humanity."
"It's very true."
She recognized the first voice as Jeremy and the second one as Damon.
"Is it easier that way?" Jeremy asked.
"Is what easier?"
"Life."
She heard Damon sigh "Life sucks either way, Jeremy, but at least if you're a vampire you don't have to feel bad about it if you don't want to"
"Is that what you did?"
"I did it for a… I did it for a very long time and life was a lot easier."
It was silent and moments later he appeared in Elena's room, seemingly surprised to see her eyes open.
"You're awake."
"Why am I here?" her voice was hoarse and she started coughing as he motioned for her to be quiet.
"No one knows you're here. I couldn't take you home because you won't let me in and I wanted to regain my strength before I fed you some blood so I decided to stop to talk to Jeremy and hoped you would wake up before I took you home."
He scooped her up and she fought to stay awake but couldn't as her eyes fluttered close.
"You have a concussion, I think you're supposed to stay awake."
She made a noise, which was good enough for him as he quietly crept down the stairs and out of Elena's house.
"What are you doing here?"
Distantly, she heard Elena's voice but her eyes were too heavy to open.
"Is she… um… she okay?" She hesitated almost as if she couldn't remember her name and something about it struck Kenzie as weird but Damon didn't seem to notice and she figured it was all in her concussed head.
"She will be, I just stopped by for a failed and feeble attempt of doing the right thing."
"Which was…?"
"It's not important."
"Is she awake?" Elena asked, referring to Kenzie.
"No, she's passed out." Damon sighed. "You know, I came to this town wanting to destroy it. Tonight I found myself wanting to protect it. How does that happen? I'm not a hero, Elena. I don't do good. It's not in me."
Kenzie, still in his arms and listening to every word he said, begged to differ. Here she was, in his arms after he had saved her from a fire, maybe there was some good in him.
"Maybe it is." Elena countered.
"No. Nah, it's reserved for my brother, and you, and Bonnie even though she has every reason to hate me, still helped Stefan save me. Even Kenzie has more good in her then I do and she tries her hardest to be a bitch."
"Kenzie?" Elena sounded confused and almost surprised and somewhere in the back of Kenzie's mind, the gears started turning, this wasn't her concussed mind.
"Why do you sound so surprised." Damon asked her, "I thought you liked Kenzie."
"I… I do, a lot. I should go in."
Something finally took hold in Kenzie's brain and she forced her eyes open in time to see Damon pulling away from kissing Elena on the cheek. She watched them look at each other through the slits in her eyes as Damon leaned closer to Elena and suddenly Kenzie began coughing loud and hard, causing the two to step apart.
"I should get her home. I'll see you later Elena."
He walked away, turning down the sidewalk towards Kenzie's house.
"you awake?" he asked.
"I was the whole time." She whispered. She grew silent, her usual quips and sarcastic comments too much for her to come up with at the moment, plus she was still trying to figure out the Elena puzzle in her head. It was right there, on the very edge but she couldn't fully grasp it and it was driving her nuts.
"When did you turn it back on?" She asked, referring to his talk with Jeremy.
"Who says I did?" He asked, no smirk or sarcasm in sight for him either.
"you saved me." She pointed out. "You didn't have to but you did."
"You didn't have to save me either but you tried twice." He countered. "Why did you?"
She shrugged, as he walked up the walkway and lied her down on the porch swing. He bit his wrist before holding it out to her and she took it without a second thought, trying not to gag around the taste. He sat beside her, giving it a few moments to work through her system.
"So you've saved me three times now." She said when she was able to speak again.
"You don't really strike me as the type who needs saving."
"I'm usually not, I mean, I don't want to be." She replied. She momentarily grew quiet as she tried to put her thoughts in order "Sometimes that's how I feel."
"What?" He asked.
"Like I've turned my humanity off."
"It's near impossible for a human to do that. Trust me, I was pretty decent while I was alive." She expected him to roll his eyes at his confession but he didn't.
"You're not so bad now, which is why I think you've turned it back on."
"You, need to go upstairs and sleep." He told her.
She nodded as she stood up and moved towards her front door, opening it as she stepped inside. She turned back around to see him standing there, just outside the threshold.
"You can come in Damon."
His eyebrows shot up, practically to his hairline as he hesitantly stepped inside, looking around her house.
"Nice place, kind of bare looking."
"dad doesn't decorate, that's more mom's thing. Was mom's thing." She corrected herself as she led the way into the living the room, flopping down onto the couch. He moved her feet off, sitting down beside her.
"Why do you say you turned your humanity off, what happened?" He asked, curious and finally hoping to get her story.
"I was supposed to graduate this year you know but I had to repeat my sophomore year."
"Yes, the thought of school makes me want to turn it off sometimes too." He said, the smallest hint of sarcasm returning.
She nudged him, letting a small smile grace her lips but then Kenzie shrugged, wondering how much she should really say. Ever since that day, she had spoken to no one about it. Even after her father tried to get her to go to grief counseling, she never spoke about it. The next thing she knew, school was over and she was told she would have to repeat the year, she had missed too much school. At the time she didn't care and when summer was over, she had walked into that school like nothing had happened and she didn't care that all her friends were in a class above her. She took the cheerleading squad back and led them to another state champion and she never spoke of her sister or her mom or when she had momentarily been too stricken with grief to even function properly. All of a sudden, everyone took a page from her book and no one spoke about it or anything. By October, Kenzie had cemented her place in the school hierarchy as the most popular, bitchiest girl in school and she was just fine with that because no one dared say anything to her about what happened.
She took a deep breath, deciding to just tell him. After all he had saved her life three times now, even if she didn't want that. "Elena and I have a lot in common you know. She lost her parents, I lost my mom and sister the same way halfway through my sophomore year, the first time. After they died, I just quit caring. So we don't have that in common because I doubt it's possible for Elena to stop caring about anything."
"True, she can't. You didn't have to stop either."
"yeah, I did. Losing Mom and Mads was the worst possible thing to happen. They were picking me up from dance the day it happened and we had a huge fight before they dropped me off. I brushed it off, I mean all families fight. I would see them after and fix it and everything would be fine. Except that never happened. Before I could work things out, they were just… gone. There one moment and gone the next."
"Did you see it?" Damon asked, super curious now.
She shook her head. "No, but I felt it."
"What, psychic?"
Another head shake as she looked down at her lap, watching a tear fall into it. She had no idea when she started crying and she didn't want to wipe it away and draw attention to herself.
"I couldn't feel Mads anymore. I remember it so clearly, during practice I was in the middle of a series of turns and in the middle of it I felt like half of me was ripped away and I remember falling down. When I hit the floor, I was gasping for air and all I could think was Mads is gone. She was gone and I could feel it and I couldn't breathe and everyone was talking to me and I couldn't move I just kept waiting for her to come back, waiting for the empty void that was in me to fill up again except it never did."
The tears flowed faster now and Damon hesitantly wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close.
"Everyone kept asking what was wrong, wondering if they should call the paramedics and I kept whispering for Mads to come back and she wouldn't, she was gone and I started screaming and I begged someone to help her and no one knew what to do, the next thing I knew, I was waking up in my bed, my dad telling me that Mom and Mads were gone."
"I love my brother, which you better not tell anyone I said that but if something happened to him, I don't think I'd know like that." He told her
"We had a special connection."
"How so?"
"She was my twin." She softly replied.
