Brave New World
Jessica opened her eyes from her blissful sleep. She dreamt that she was human, that Caroline was human and her entire family wasn't lying to her. As soon as she sat up, the memories came rushing up
She was a vampire.
She killed Caroline.
Groaning, she tried to suppress the torturous memories, but the urge for blood fought her. She wanted all of the supernatural hell to disappear. If Elena hadn't lied to her this whole mess could have been avoided. Jessica couldn't find it in her to forgive her lying, cheating sister. She never hated someone before, she rarely ever refused to forgive, but this time, forgiveness seemed impossible.
On both ends.
How could Caroline ever forgive her? She turned her into a monster! Although, it was unavoidable. Maybe Caroline would see that and forgive her. She might display an uncharacteristic sense of understanding.
"That's so mean," she muttered to herself as she stood up. She furrowed her eyebrows together. "Okay, I am totally going crazy. Is that apart of vampirism? Insanity? Well, I do drink blood now..."
As she murmured to herself, she completely forgot that vampires burn in the sun and stepped in front of the ray of sunshine which shun through the window. The skin on her forearm sizzled, smoke issued from her burnt wrist. Jessica gasped and gritted her teeth to prevent her from screaming.
She pulled her arm away from the ray and it healed immediately, but the shock still remained.
Jessica sighed. How on earth was she supposed to live the rest of eternity like this?
A vampire's fangs are awfully sharp, she thought as she stared at her reflection the mirror. She pressed her finger to her fangs, inspecting them. Of course they would have to be sharp, how else could a vampire rip out a chunk of a human's throat?
Veins crawled from underneath her eyes. As quick as they came, Jessica forced them back. She was getting good and turning on the vamp-face and then turning it back off. It was like a TV; one switch turned it off and the other powered it back up. Unfortunately, the bloodlust wasn't as easy to control as 'flipping a switch'.
"Jessica?" Elena yelled, knocking on the bathroom door. Technically, Elena had two bathrooms, although she preferred using the one she and Jessica shared instead of the one she shared with Jeremy. "Are you alright?"
No. I'm not 'alright'. I'm a friggin' vampire because you didn't tell me that they existed! She so badly wanted to roar at Elena, but then she'd give away her little, huge secret. "Yeah, fine!" she shouted back, trying not to sound too bitter.
"Can I come in?" Elena asked.
"Um, yeah," Jessica said. "Sure."
She unlocked the bathroom door and Elena stepped inside, appearing to be shocked by her sister's pale, almost hungry expression and the lack of sunlight in the bathroom. "Why are the blinds shut?"
Jessica chewed on her lower lip, thinking of a response. "Em... headache."
Elena nodded sympathetically, buying the excuse. "Oh, the one from yesterday?"
"Yeah..."
"So then you can't come to the carnival," Elena said.
"When's that?" Jessica questioned, vaguely recalling Caroline's mention of some sort of carnival. Caroline... Even her name made Jessica feel immense guilt.
"Tonight," she answered. "You should come, if you're better."
Night-time. She could go if it was night-time. There would be no sun to burn her and the sooner she returned to normality, the less anyone would suspect her.
"Maybe," Jessica said. "We'll see."
The dark of night had replaced the sunny brightness of day. Jessica had always preferred day-time, she was a sunny person, but vampirism meant that she couldn't enjoy the sun without being burnt to a crisp, until she got one of those daylight rings.
She had to tell someone, Jessica realised. She couldn't live the rest of her life - which lasted forever - hiding the biggest secret that ever was. Jenna would notice something was up after two weeks of staying in her room, as would Elena and Jeremy, who would probably realise why she was hiding after a while.
Not to mention her desire for vengeance that continued to rage inside of her. She wanted to make Damon suffer.
Jessica put on a pair of dark blue skinny jeans, a brown tank top and her leather jacket. She applied some mascara to her eyelashes and eyeliner, creating a rather subtle, smoky look.
With a determined face, she left to the carnival.
She went firstly to the ring toss. Jessica wondered whether vampirism increased accuracy, which was proven correct when the ring circled the peg with only one shot. She got three goes, and each time she succeeded.
Bonnie, who was in charge of the stall, gave Jessica her prize; a teddy bear. She looked extremely suprised. "Wow, you sucked at ring toss. What happened?"
Jessica shrugged, smiling. "Sports increase accuracy," she lied. Even her lying had improved! Vampirism shaped the average human into perfection by the looks of things.
After she talked to Bonnie, she went to get a hot dog. She hadn't eaten anything other than blood in the past twenty-four hours. Food still smelt and tasted really good, even though blood was her primary craving. Maybe it would help suppress her cravings.
She sat down with her hot dog, soon to be joined by her hamburger-eating friend, Matt. She felt the ketchup sliding down her chin, but she didn't care. The hot dog tasted too good.
Matt laughed at her. "Nice hot dog, huh?"
Jessica nodded and muffled a 'uh-huh', causing Matt to further laugh at her. She focused on the vein in his neck. The scent of his blood made her ravenous. Why was his blood more appealing than Bonnie's was? Was there a difference between a witch's and a human's blood?
She took a five second break from her hot dog and said, "it's yummy." But not nearly as nice as your blood would be.
The quarterback chuckled and wiped the dripping ketchup from her chin with his thumb. Jessica shivered from his touch. Apparently, being a vampire meant that you could feel things more powerfully too. But she shouldn't have been feeling that way, over Matt - her best friend's boyfriend and her ex-boyfriend.
Her eyes connected with his. How long had she felt that way about him? Jessica thought that she was over him. Guess I was wrong.
So wrong.
Matt was the first to pull away. Jessica blushed with embarrassment. "Sorry, I don't-"
"Oh, no," Jessica said, shaking her head. "It's... fine. So, um... how's Caroline?"
It was an odd question, considering that she knew more about how Caroline was than Matt did. Caroline was a vampire; a blood-sucking, ravenous vampire, just like Jessica was.
He didn't seem to like the question. "I visited her earlier... she was acting really weird."
Jessica knitted her eyebrows together. "Weird how?"
"She freaked out when I opened the curtains," Matt told her. "And she got from the bed to the wall like that." He snapped his fingers together.
She tried to look surprised instead of guilty, but Jessica was never good at hiding her emotions, especially guilt. She was sure that if Vicki Donovan never told Matt about her having sex with Tyler, Jessica would have burst in the end.
Just as she was about to reply, she saw Damon going into the school behind Matt. Jessica stood up abruptly. "I've gotta go," she said, her bag slung around her shoulders. Matt looked bewildered. "There's someone I need to talk to."
"Jessica, wait!" Matt called after her, but when he turned around in his chair, he noticed that she was gone. "What the..."
In the school, Jessica was following Damon, who went into the school hallway near Mr. Saltzman's classroom. He heard footsteps behind him and spun around.
"Hey, doe-eyes," Damon greeted, smirking. "Haven't seen you in a while."
"I remember," Jessica announced.
That caught Damon's attention. He knew exactly what she was talking about. "What do you remember?"
"Everything," she replied. "Every piece of information you told me and then erased. I remember how you manipulated me to do whatever you wanted, you pushed me around, abused me, erased my memories, used me as your replacement Katherine, fed on me."
Damon shook his head. "You're crazy."
Jessica stepped towards him. "I'm not," she stated. "All the memories have been coming back, in pieces."
He still dismissed her. Jessica was almost frustrated, but then she realised that it didn't really matter. "You can't remember. It's impossible." His face lit up in realisation. "Unless you're becoming a..."
Jessica smiled. "I have a message from Katherine. She said 'Game on.'"
She turned around and began to walk away. Damon followed her. "Wait..."
With newfound strength, she pushed him onto the floor. She sneered at him with utter disgust and resentment. "You suck."
Jessica was very pleased with her choice of wording.
Damon had dragged his brother and Elena into an empty classroom to talk about the newly turned vampire-doppelganger. "How did this happen?" Elena asked, shocked.
"Well, Katherine must have fed her some blood, and then killed her," Damon explained. "A plus B equals..."
"But why?" she questioned angrily. "Why Jessica? What has she done to her?"
"Katherine is a manipulative, nasty, little slut," Damon spat. "Who knows why she did it?"
Tears pooled in Elena's eyes. How could she have not noticed? They were too busy trying to make sure Damon didn't fall apart and that Katherine didn't hurt anyone. Little did they know, that Katherine made the lowest blow one could make while they were distracted.
"And she said 'game on'?" Stefan inquired, confused. "What is that even mean?"
"It means she's playing dirty," Damon answered. "She wants us to know."
Elena scoffed. "Well we already knew, didn't we? She turned Jessica into a vampire! My sister! Why Jessica, of all people?"
Damon looked almost saddened. "I don't know," he said somberly.
"Jessica must be completely out of her mind," Stefan spoke, sympathy running through his tone. "She doesn't even know what's happening to her."
"Oh, I think she does," Damon remarked. "All of my compulsion from the past started wearing off the minute she was in transition. Which means, Elena, you have some swift apologising to do."
Stefan shot him a glare, as did Elena. "We have to find her," Stefan stated.
Damon, surprisingly, agreed and nodded. "Yep, and kill her."
Elena shook her head. "You're not killing Jessica. She's my sister!"
"She knows who we are, Elena," Damon said. "She's officially a liability, and we've got to get rid of her."
"Damon, absolutely not," Stefan disagreed firmly.
"Need I remind you of a tragic little story of a girl named Vicki Donovan?" Stefan looked down at the ground. "Jessica, of all people, will not make it as a vampire. She's delicate, weak-"
"Damon," Elena scolded.
"Oh, come on Elena!" Damon exclaimed in exasperation. "We all know how this story's gonna end. Just flip to the last chapter, and..."
"It's not an option Damon," the brown haired doppelganger declared sternly.
"No?" Damon said patronisingly. "Your silence is deafening, Stefan. Wait, wasn't there a school carnival the night you staked Vicki? Talk about a town where story repeats herself. You know I'm right."
"We're not gonna kill her," Stefan objected.
"It's the only way."
Jessica was walking out of the school when she came face to face with the one person she did not want to see.
"Caroline," Jessica spoke, dumbfounded.
She looked different and seemed to favour a much darker look, instead of the colourful Caroline she had once known. Maybe this was another way in which death had changed her.
"You killed me," Caroline accused. "You killed me. Why did you turn me into this?"
"Because she told me to," Jessica tried, close to tears. "I'm so sorry, Caroline."
The blonde began to whimper. "I fed on someone. I don't know what's happening. What am I?"
"You're a vampire," she informed her. Caroline didn't have any memories to unlock as far as Jessica knew. "Damon's blood was in your system when I..." She sucked in a deep breath. "When I killed you."
Caroline scowled at her old best friend. "Why did you kill me? Why me?"
"There's this woman... Katherine," she began softly. "She's the lady who turned me into this. She's the one who told me that I had to kill you or else she'd kill Jeremy, Jenna, Matt and even John, and then she'd turn you herself."
The cheerleader looked frightened. Of course she would be. Caroline was practically ignorant of the supernatural world. "Is she going to hurt me?"
Jessica shrugged her shoulders lightly. She couldn't find any words to speak with. Guilt and pity burdened her mind. It was torture when you felt everything times ten. "I don't know."
"Are you going to hurt me?" Caroline remarked, distrustful of her former friend. "I mean, more than you have?"
Her heart dropped, and it took all that she had not to cry. Caroline thought she was going to hurt her? It was understandable, obviously, but it still hurt.
"No, I'm not going to hurt you."
Caroline didn't look very convinced, instead she looked angry. "And why should I trust you?" she spat in a tone alien to Jessica.
Her face shifted. Gone was the gentle features Caroline usually wore, and they were replaced with protruding veins, fangs and darkened eyes. She was terrifying.
She launched herself towards Jessica. They were the same vampiric age, so neither of them could truly win with just vampire powers. Months of sport meant that Jessica was superior when it came to strength, but since she didn't want to hurt Caroline, the blonde became the superior.
Caroline pinned her against the wall. "Caroline, stop!" she begged. "Care, please!"
Her grip tightened around Jessica's throat, and the elder vampire began wheezing. "See what it's like to have your airways messed with?" she growled. "Sucks, doesn't it?"
Jessica came to the conclusion that she wasn't going to win by being kind. Didn't the snapping of a neck subdue vampires?
She grabbed Caroline's wrist and switched the positions of dominance quickly. She pressed her arms behind her back before reaching for Caroline's head and snapping it. She fell limply to the ground.
She prepared a speech to say to Caroline when she woke up. Jessica sobbed incontrolably as she thought of what she had done. She had murdered two men. Granted, they weren't model citizens, but they were humans too. As she thought of those men's bloody death, she thought of her own hunger.
Jessica glanced sorrowfully at Caroline's body. She had made things so much worse! How on earth was Caroline supposed to forgive her now? She knew that she wouldn't forgive Caroline if the situation was reversed. Although she wished for Caroline to be the better person.
There wasn't one thing Jessica could have done to avoid this. She could have told Stefan and Elena, but then Katherine would retaliate and Jessica guessed that her retaliations weren't too sweet.
A dark-skinned man with a kind face approached Jessica. He was bleeding. She couldn't... but she was so hungry. Her shoulders slumped as she gave into her urges.
"Hey, is everything okay?" Carter said.
He was seemed kind. Jessica gulped. She was a monster. She couldn't hide it anymore.
"I'm so sorry."
"What?"
She vamped over to him and grabbed his shoulders roughly. "But I'm so hungry."
She plunged her fangs into his neck, getting at his arteries and sucking all the blood from them. She didn't stop until he was dead.
Jessica looked regretfully at his dead body. Another dead person on her hands.
Carter had been a nice man... a gentleman. He didn't deserve to die. Nobody deserved to die.
He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he paid the ultimate price.
She would have to be pragmatic about the whole situation. Where was she going to hide his body? First off, she would have to clear herself up. Blood dripped from her chin onto her clothes. They'd either think that she was wearing a Halloween costume a couple months too late or that she couldn't fit a hot dog into her mouth properly. The only person who'd suspect her was the vampire hunters.
Jessica stopped herself. She was being incredibly selfish. Moments after slaughtering a man, she was already thinking about what she going to do next and where to bury the body. Carter probably had a nice family somewhere. They'd never see him again. And it was all her fault.
She fell to her knees next to Carter's body. One moment of weakness was all it took to destroy someone's life. She'd have to be more careful, more aware.
"I'm so sorry," she whimpered. Jessica heard someone coming behind her. She recognised who it was. "I did this to him. I killed him. Just like I killed Caroline."
Damon was shocked, though he masked it. "You killed Caroline Forbes...?" Then it hit him. "While she had my blood in her system. You turned her. Katherine told you to, didn't she?"
The doppelganger nodded, not taking her eyes off Carter's body. Somehow, it was mesmerising. "She threatened Jeremy and Jenna and John. I couldn't let her hurt them."
"She's using you as her minion," Damon realised.
"Her little vampire minion," Jessica spat. "I don't even know what's happening to me! What the hell is wrong with me?"
Damon got down next to her. "Hey, hey, it's okay. I can help you," he soothed.
Jessica looked at him, surprised and distrustful. "You can?"
"Yeah," he replied. "I have to."
With childish ignorance, Jessica hoped with all of her heart that he could reverse her vampirism. "What are you gonna do?"
"The only thing I can do," he answered. "I'm gonna kill you."
She gasped and shuffled away from him. She should have known better than to trust Damon. "Please don't!" Jessica begged. "I can't - I don't - I don't want to die!"
"Yeah, but you're already dead," Damon pointed out.
"No! I'm not!" Jessica argued.
"Look." The raven-haired vampire gestured to Carter and Caroline, both unconscious on the floor and, in Carter's case, dead. "Vampirism has changed you. You're not the person you once were. Jessica, you're a monster."
Jessica shook her head frantically and placed her hands over her ears, as if she could unhear it. "No! I'm still... I'm not... Just don't say that! Please! Just help me!"
"Okay."
She was dumbfound. She hadn't expected him to agree so easily. "Okay?" she repeated, testing the word. "So you're going to help me?"
"Yes," he replied. "I'll help you."
Damon wrapped her in his arms. He took out a stake he had found only moments ago and pointed it at her back. If he plunged it into her skin, it would reach her heart, and effectively kill her. They'd get one up on Katherine and they'd have solved another problem to their secret.
It was all a blur to Jessica, but suddenly Stefan rushed it and pushed Damon away from her. Jessica then noticed that Damon had a stake in his hand. Stakes killed vampires.
Damon was going to kill her.
Why was she surprised?
"Stefan!" Damon exclaimed.
She looked beside her, sensing someone's prescence. Elena.
She jumped away from her twin like she would a monster. "Get away from me!"
Elena looked startled. "What?" Jess, it's me - Elena."
"I know it's you," Jessica said. "You had Damon compel me."
She had the nerve to look confused. Jessica knew that it was sincere confusion. "What?"
"Don't play dumb, Elena," Jessica snapped. "That night with your journal and then Damon offered to compel me; an offer you gladly took."
Something seemed to click with Elena, as her face soon filled with understanding and sorrow. "Jessica, I-we had to."
"No!" she shouted. "No. You didn't 'have to' do anything! I could have handled knowing and maybe if I did know I wouldn't be a vampire! And then Caroline wouldn't be one either and Carter wouldn't have died and everything would've been fine..."
Elena interrupted her rambling. "Wait, Caroline?"
"She turned her," Damon spoke. Jessica looked at the ground. "Katherine threatened her, of course, and then baby-vamp decided to go alone and murdered barbie-vamp. So now we have two baby vampires and one or both of them is going to die. Preferably before they spill our secret to the whole of Mystic Falls."
Elena ignored him while Jessica looked thoroughly worried and anxious. "Stefan, we've got to get her inside."
"It's okay, Jessica, come with me," Stefan ushered. Somehow, she felt safe with him.
"She'll die!" Damon stated. "It's only a matter of time!"
"Yeah, maybe so, but it's not gonna happen tonight," Stefan objected.
"Oh yeah it is."
Damon grabbed the stake and vamped over to them. Elena placed herself between Damon and Jessica. "Damon, she's my sister," Elena said sternly.
Jessica looked between them. When had they gotten so close?
Damon hesitated, before eventually dropping his arm. "Whatever happens, it's on you."
"Jessica?" She turned around to see Bonnie approaching them, appearing confused. She spotted Caroline in the corner. "What? Why is Caroline on the ground? And why is there blood on your face...?" Jessica was beginning to hate that look of realisation that always appeared when they realised that Jessica was, indeed, a vampire. "No, you're not, you can't be!"
Bonnie touched her. A look of utter horror crossed her features. "Bonnie?"
The Bennett witch saw Carter's body. "Oh, God!"
"Bonnie..." Jessica said worriedly.
Stefan dragged her away from Bonnie's accusing look and into the bathroom. He grabbed some tissue to clean her blood-stained face. "Bonnie hates me," Jessica stated.
He shook his head. "No, she's just in shock, we all are."
"All the memories came rushing back," Jessica told him. "All of them. It was like... like they were happening all over again. It was horrible. There was this time when Elena told Damon to compel away my memories... did you know about that?"
By the look on his face, Jessica guessed he hadn't. "No, I didn't, but maybe it was for the best."
"No, it wasn't!" Jessica exclaimed. "You know what they say: 'knowledge is power'! If I had known about this whole other world with vampires and-and witches, maybe I wouldn't be a vampire now. Maybe I wouldn't be a murderer! A monster!"
"Look at me," Stefan firmly said. "Your emotions are heightened right now, it's part of the transformation, it's completely normal, I promise you okay?"
Jessica looked at the mirror. Veins crawled from underneath her dark eyes. She slammed her fist off the sink in frustration. "Why does this keep on happening to my face?"
"Look at me, look at me, look at me!" Stefan demanded. "Jessica, Jessica! Look at me! Look at my face, look at my face!" He showed her how his face could change as well. "You see that? When you feel the blood rushing, you tell yourself that you're going to get through it, that you're strong enough. Yes, yes, no matter how good it feels to give yourself over to it, you fight it off, you bury it. Watch me, watch me." Suddenly, his face went back to normal. "It's the only way you're gonna survive this thing. Try."
Jessica inhaled deeply. I will survive this. She saw herself - her real self - in the mirror.
"That's good," the younger Salvatore commented.
"Why did Katherine do this to me?" Jessica asked.
"I don't know," Stefan said honestly. "I wish I did. Hey, hey, I promise you I will not let anything happen to you. Come here." He embraced the newbie vampire warmly.
Stefan said that he was going to persuade Bonnie to make her a daylight ring. She didn't mention about the two drug-addicts, but somehow she knew that it wouldn't affect Stefan's perspective of her. Bonnie on the other hand...
"Glad to see you're better," Jenna said. Jessica was watching Friends on the TV in the living room. "I was worried about you."
Jessica scoffed. "I'm fine. Don't worry about me."
Jenna sighed. "I always worry about you."
She left Jessica pondering. Was that supposed to be offensive?
The doorbell rang. Jessica got up and answered it. A blonde haired quarterback stood on the porch. "Matt? What are you doing here?" she asked him, folding her arms over her nightgown. "You do realise it's nine o'clock?"
"Yeah, um..." he trailed off. "I just needed some company. Things with Caroline haven't been great."
"Oh?"
"She's been acting really weird," Matt said. "Even weirder than you."
"Hey!"
"No offense," Matt continued."I was just... I mean, it's okay if..."
"Well, Matthew, you have two options," Jessica said, a smirk tugging at her lips. "You can either come inside or stay out on the porch all night. Personally, I'd choose the former. I mean, it is still January..."
Matt laughed and stepped inside.
Maybe things would go back to normal after all.