Author's Note:
Sorry it took me a little while to update! See, here's what happened: I wrote and re-wrote this chapter several times, and by the time I finished, I had a 20-22 page chapter that would have been way too long to publish. In the end, I've divided it into two parts: the first part is Dr. Diane-centric, and the second part is pure Mikaela/Damon and tomb-centric to make up for the background chapter here.
I hope all of you are well, and Happy August! Summer Vacation is almost over!
PS: The italics are Dr. Diane's flashbacks, not Mikaela's visions.
PPS: Zachariah is the same Zack from earlier chapters; Diane just has this thing with calling people by their full names, not nicknames.
The light streaming in from between the curtains woke her from her deep sleep and back to reality. It had been a crazy night of dancing, drinking, and kissing; in all honesty, she couldn't even remember how many shots of tequila she'd had before the kissing had started. Luckily it had only been with her boyfriend of ten months, a young man with the perfect looks to keep her entertained, but too much of a small-town attitude to keep her interested. She had plans, and getting married didn't fit into those plans.
She stretched her arms above her head, groaning at the dull pain the movement caused. She felt like she'd run a marathon, and in all honesty, that was no surprise; considering the hours she'd spent clubbing with her two best friends and their boyfriends, she was lucky she could even move at all. A pounding in her head reminded her that no long night came without consequences, and two of those consequences were a hangover and missing her big date with Joseph. Knowing him, he'd want to go to her apartment and keep her company anyways, maybe even nurse her to health: he was a doll like that.
Her girlfriends thought she was crazy for not having slept with him yet. She laid down on her pillow and rested her hand on her forehead, closing her eyes against the dizziness. They didn't understand. It hadn't been a problem sleeping with Trent, Alexander, and what's-his-face, Heath: all those boys had wanted was a good time, just like her, and if any accidents had happened, she never felt the obligation to tell them about it. Joseph, on the other hand, wanted more: he wanted a wife, a family, even a white picket fence if they were still in style when the time came. Those were things a girl like her couldn't offer. Her life wasn't a love story, and she was hardly the saint he made her out to be. An arm draped around her waist and she felt someone press their lips to her ear.
"Awake already?"
Her life was more of a cheap horror flick.
Her eyes flew open at the sound of Joseph's husky morning voice, something she'd only heard on his birthday when she'd snuck into his dorm room for breakfast in bed. He chuckled and started to kiss her neck, a smile on his lips as he did so. She struggled for words, but no sound came out of her mouth as everything in her world came crashing down.
She was naked under the sheets and Joseph was with her. She'd gone through the routine enough times to realize what had happened in her drunken haze and to figure out that the soreness she felt was not solely a result of the partying. Before his hands could start to explore her body (again, she had to remind herself), she shot out of bed like a bullet.
Her ankles tangled in an abandoned pair of pants and she almost fell over in her haste to run to- the shared closet? With horror she realized that the apartment wasn't her own, either. Where there should have been Chinese scrolls hanging from the walls there were band posters, and under her feet where her Indian rug should have been, there was a mess of dirty laundry and class notes: she was in Joseph's dorm room, the room he shared with-
"Woah!"
She screamed and grabbed a towel off the floor to cover herself as Zachariah walked in, his eyes widening like saucers when he saw her. "Dude, that's my girl you're gawking at!" Joseph exclaimed exasperatedly. "Get out!" Still Zachariah was frozen. She growled and grabbed a shoe.
"Get out!" she yelled, flinging the shoe at him. Faster than humanly possible he ducked out of the room, sputtering apologies to both her and Joseph as he made his escape. That Zack, he was a nervous person, but that was no excuse. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and she felt dizzy from standing up much too quickly, but nothing compared to what she felt when she saw her reflection in the mirror hanging from the door.
Her wild blonde hair was in an even bigger disarray than it normally was in the morning, making her face and body look sickly thin. Her blue eyes were wide and—to both her horror and disgust—there was a hickey forming on her neck: public evidence. "Babe, you okay?" Slowly she turned around. Joseph was still in bed, propped on his elbow and looking at her with concern. "I thought the door was locked, but Zack won't tell anybody-"
"I need to make a phone call."
She hardly recognized her calm, empty voice as she grabbed her phone off the bedside cabinet and marched to the bathroom, head held high, as always. She closed the door behind her and locked it with an audible click. She waited for the sound of footsteps, but they didn't come; Joseph had always been one for respecting her privacy. Certain she had at least five minutes before he started to worry, she set down the toilet seat and sat down, pressing number four on her cell phone for speed dial.
He answered before the second ring. "Good morning, Diane. I trust you woke up with a beautiful hangover?"
"You bastard," she hissed, clutching the towel to her chest. "You bastard!"
There was only the sound of the radio on the other end. "Now, I know you think I'm a telepath, but my mind-reading abilities don't exactly work over the phone-"
"Why couldn't you just leave me alone?" she continued in a furious whisper. "Joseph isn't like the other guys, he actually wants a family!"
"Well, shouldn't you be happy that you found the perfect guy to father your baby girl?" he reasoned after a pause. "Most girls would be elated to be in your-"
"I don't give a shit!" she snapped. "Most girls don't have a vampire for a brother! Most girls don't come from a family of witches! Most girls don't have the ghost of their great great-whatever grandmother living inside of them, God damn it! Benji, I thought you understood!"
"I do understand, but you wanted to get rid of the curse, didn't you? This is the best way," he reminded her. "Once the girl matures, the curse will be passed from you into her, and you'll be rid of Elizabeth for good."
"That's not the point! I'm not ready for a kid, and I don't want to live a lie!" she whispered earnestly, barely choking back a sob. "Joseph doesn't deserve to live like this, either! Please, just let me get an abortion!"
"Yeah, right. And don't even think of pulling a fast one on me like last time, I'm going to be watching everything you drink to make sure you don't have another one of those 'special non-abortion, abortion teas'. Just tell him the truth."
"He'll be disgusted with me," she said under her breath. "I'm sure he could handle the curse, but the part about Nikolai... I don't think so. He'll feel like I betrayed him."
"Then don't tell him."
Diane sighed and pulled her knees up to her chest, burying her face in them. "I hate you, Benji. I hate you, Elizabeth, Damon, everyone... so much."
Dr. Diane turned the key in the front door of her house only to find that it was unlocked.
It had been months since the last time that had happened... Taking a breath to regain herself, she pushed open the door and listened for the person. When she didn't hear anything, she stepped inside and looked around the parlor. A pair of dirt-caked boots were set by the door, along with a jacket hanging on the coat-rack and a cell-phone on the small table. Mikaela hadn't been to the house since she first "welcomed" her mother back from her trip, which could only mean she had business to attend to that could only be attended to at the house.
Not bothering to announce her arrival, Dr. Diane hung her jacket up next to Mikaela's and pulled off her boots, setting them on the small rack by the door. Following the light trail of dirt, she found herself standing in the doorway to her office, watching her daughter work at the copying machine.
Back when Joseph had decided he wanted to start working part-time as a professor at the university, he and his wife had figured that they should expand their office for both of their sakes. They'd invested in a small copying machine and a second desk as well as some bookshelves that had filled up within only two months. Mikaela taking copies then and there was actually the first time that the machine got any use despite Joseph's insistence that day at the Office Depot that they absolutely needed one.
"I assume you got Benji's text."
Even if Dr. Diane had a spell up to keep her daughter from reading her aura, it was no surprise that the psychic could sense her. "I was expecting to see Benji only, but it's good to see you alive," Dr. Diane said, crossing her arms and leaning against the door frame. "What are you doing?" Mikaela didn't look up from her work to greet her.
"Taking copies of the spell," she answered flatly, lifting the cover and turning the page. "I'm working on two copies. Do you want one, or should I wait for Benji?"
"How did you find it?" she asked.
"I had a vision," she explained, avoiding eye contact. It was clear that she was wondering if she should stick around for conversation or not. "The past couple of days I kept having a vision of the grimoire underground, so I went and dug up Johnathon Gilbert's grave, but found nothing. Last night the vision was clearer, of Stefan and Elena digging up Giuseppe Salvatore's grave tonight. I cheated and went first thing this morning once I got back from Georgia."
"It was in Salvatore's grave?" Dr. Diane repeated. Mikaela nodded. "And you didn't need the journal to find it?" She shook her head.
"Nope, once I had the vision, it canceled out the need for the journal." Once she'd scanned the last page, she took copies of the front and back covers for extra measure. "How did you know about the whole journal drama?"
"Benji," she answered, waving a hand. "He told me he got the journal for a friend of his. Have you read it yet?"
"Only scanned through it for the important parts," she said, picking up the small pile of copies and sorting the pages out into the two pamphlets. "Do you have a stapler?"
Dr. Diane nodded and walked over to the desk, pulling it out of the drawer. "Is there anything about our curse in there?"
"I found a thing or two," she said, and stopped. "'Our' curse?"
Dr. Diane raised a brow. "You didn't think the curse only affected you, did you?" she said calmly, picking up one of the copies. Mikaela had done a good job: there was hardly a detail that wasn't clear on the pages. "It's passed down from mother to daughter once the daughter reaches adulthood."
"I figured as much, but-"
"We'd be better off not discussing this subject in a house that Benji has been invited into," she interrupted. "Especially not when he's on his way here to meet us." Surely enough, not even seconds later, footsteps sounded outside the door, signaling the vampire's arrival.
"Well well, look at my two favorite ladies getting along,"Benji said, walking into the room with his characteristically charming smile. "What are you two up to?" He took in Mikaela's dirt-covered jeans and tattered t-shirt and frowned. "And why on earth did you let Damon convince you that making out in the dirt was a good idea?" Mikaela opened her mouth to make some sort of clever retort, but Dr. Diane felt a tug in her stomach at the mental image Benji imposed and help up her hand.
"Please, if you don't mind, I'd rather we focus on matters more important than my daughter's relationship with an older man," she cut off, and help up the papers. "Such as this, for example." Benji smirked at Mikaela and moved next to Dr. Diane.
"You got the journal?" he asked, reading over her shoulder. "I could have sworn that..." His smile disappeared as his pale green eyes swept over the pages, taking in the fact that the pages were not part of the journal at all. He reached forward and Dr. Diane slapped his hand away.
"Unless you've tapped into your sister's reserve of magic and plan to open the tomb yourself, I'm keeping this," she said, leaning back against the copying machine. "You can go tell your friends that we'll open the tomb tonight. Sound good?"
"Sounds... Perfect," he said, recovering quickly. Mikaela scrunched up her face in confusion and stepped forward.
"Wait, what friends?" she asked. "I'm lost." Benji sat on the desk in front of her.
"Remember I told you I knew how to get the journal?" Mikaela nodded in confirmation. "Well, I knew how to get the journal because I've been playing nice with some vampires in town."
"I'm still not understanding," she said flatly. "Who else wants to get into the tomb?"
Benji sighed, bracing himself for the interrogation as he leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. "There's a vampire in the tomb named Pearl," he explained in a bored tone. "Her daughter, Anna, wants to get Mother Dearest out."
"That wasn't part of the plan," she argued. "If you guys want to get in the tomb and try to get a bite at Katherine, that's fine, but the more people who get involved, the more-"
"She was planning on kidnapping Elena to use as leverage against Bonnie," he interrupted. "If that's not enough, she'd been dating Jeremy Gilbert if not for the sole purpose of using him against Elena and Stefan. The cherry on this sundae of bad news is that she's been turning people into vampires and using them for her dirty work. The only reason she hasn't threatened anything of yours yet is because I've convinced them that you're useless."
"Your point being?"
"Keep the scary vampire happy and no one gets hurt," he concluded with a shrug. "Let her in and out of the tomb. In my opinion, one mommy vampire on the loose isn't much different from the current situation in town, and so long as I can get at Katherine, I dare not complain."
Mikaela sighed and ran a hand through her hair. Dr. Diane watched her daughter carefully and knew the girl saw the reason in what Benji was saying, but wasn't too happy about the situation. "Fine," she surrendered. "You guys can share that copy."
"Who's the other copy for?" he asked, gesturing at the untouched booklet. "Stefan?"
"And why the hell would Stefan want to get into the tomb?" she exclaimed in exasperation. "Is his mom in there, too?"
Benji held up his hands defensively. "Salvatore's mother is dead, but I just figured that you might have involved him in our plot to make Katherine glorified barbecue," he said, raising a brow. "At the very least he could be useful in keeping Damon busy while we get in there and burn the bitch up."
"You're gonna have to come up with another plan, because Damon's coming with us."
It was as if time froze. In that pause, Dr. Diane and Benji both realized what was going on. Mikaela wasn't on their side, she was helping Damon. She was just as shocked as Benji was at the realization, but he was more expressive about his sentiments. The vampire cursed and clenched his fists, barely holding back the frustration. "You were planning to let Damon take Katherine, weren't you?" he asked tightly, although it was a rhetoric question. "Have you forgotten that it's his fault we're stuck with this damn curse?" Mikaela didn't lower her head in shame or falter, simply set her jaw decisively.
"'Keep the scary vampire happy'," she quoted, narrowing her eyes at him. "I asked you for help because nobody else in this damn town would be able to understand: Elena's too busy trying to walk on an unachievable moral plane and Bonnie's grandmother would only let her do it over her dead body."
"That's not the point!"
"I never agreed to kill Katherine: that's a suicide mission that you're more than welcome to take on, considering you heal much faster than I do. Damon's been wreaking havoc for 145 years because of that damn woman, so I say let's just let him have her already so he can leave town," Mikaela snapped, not taking too kindly to being scolded. "Then we can figure out how to break the curse on our own."
"But she's-!" Benji stopped himself from finishing his sentence and closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath. It took a couple of seconds for him to regain himself, but once he did, he opened his eyes and gave Mikaela a firm look. "Tonight, at the tomb," he ordered, giving her a stern glare that she returned full force. "If Damon asks, we agreed to help you out because of Anna. I'll come up with a plan once Katherine is out of the tomb." He turned his gaze onto Dr. Diane, who didn't even blink. "I'll be there at 6 o'clock to get the place prepared. We're doing this regardless of who shows up."
"Fine," she answered with a nod. "I'll bring the vervain just in case we get more vampire company than you can handle." Mikaela didn't say anything at all, simply glared at his back as he left the room, hands balled into tight fists. Once the front door slammed, Dr. Diane waited for Mikaela to speak.
Several seconds passed before her daughter let out a breath she'd been holding and rolled her eyes. "So, why are we hiding things from Benji?" Mikaela asked, apparently unaffected by Benji's outburst. Then again, she'd always been a good actress. Dr. Diane held back the urge to smirk and put her copy on the desk.
"His goals only partially coincide with ours," she explained, watching her daughter for a reaction as she put her copies into a binder. "We all want the curse broken, but I would rather not make vampire friends or have people dying along the way. He really doesn't care about what it takes."
"Sounds like Damon to me," Mikaela commented.
"Speaking of which, why exactly are you helping Damon?" she asked, crossing her arms. "You could have just let him go chase after the journal, then get into the tomb and kill Katherine while he was distracted, and the curse would be broken."
Mikaela paused for a moment, considering her answer carefully. When ten seconds passed and the girl didn't say anything, Dr. Diane sighed, resigned. There were only so many things they could talk about before the walls between them grew taller. Mikaela snapped the rings of her binder shut and braced her hands against the desk, taking a deep breath. "I don't think this is going anywhere," she finally confessed, albeit with hesitation. "We all want to get at Katherine for our own reasons, and yet we're running on blind faith, assuming she's actually in that tomb."
"So you think she's... free?" she asked carefully. She was trying to mask her surprise, but she was certain Mikaela would have been able to see it in her eyes if she'd so chosen to look up at that moment. The girl hadn't directly said anything about her suspicion, but her doubt alone was enough: Mikaela had a way of seeing things for what they really were, at least when it didn't have to do with her own mother. Could it be possible that the bitch was alive and free?
"I don't know what I think," she said with a tired sigh, still not looking up. "Either way, nobody's going to believe anything I say about this because they all want this too much. Damon wants Katherine, Benji wants Katherine dead, you have your own weird agenda, and I could really care less. I just want the grimoire to read about my curse."
"Then why are you trying to open the tomb at all?"
Silence covered them like a heavy blanket, making it hard to breathe. The answer started to appear to the doctor like a pair of headlights approaching through a thick fog. At first she doubted what the silence was telling her, but as the seconds passed, there was no mistake. Dropping her collected mask, Dr. Diane pushed away from the desk and approached her daughter, the anger rolling off of her in waves.
"Say it isn't true," she whispered. Mikaela didn't say anything. "Answer me, God dammit!"
"Why?" Mikaela snapped, straightening up and narrowing her eyes. "Obviously you already have an idea of what the 'truth' is, so why should I bother to correct it?" Dr. Diane resisted the urge to shove her back and balled her fists.
"Are you in love with him?" she demanded. She saw the girl's eyes widen, but only for a second before returning to her glare. It didn't take a psychic to sense that she'd hit a nerve.
"The curse is hereditary, isn't it?" The question was a rhetoric one: Dr. Diane had told her as much only minutes before. "When were you planning on telling me about it?"
"I didn't think it would be so active in you," she nearly yelled, not backing down. "Your third eye makes you more susceptible than I was. Under normal circumstances, you would only be having the occasional nightmare or sense of déjà vu."
"And the whole coming-back-to-life thing," she added for her, glaring. "I suppose you couldn't have mentioned it after the car accident?"
"Oh come on, you've been dying since you were born!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "Fevers, injuries, poisoning- I swear you died at least eight times before the age of five, much less before the accident. You were always looking for danger, and nothing good would have come from you knowing. Hell, even now that you know, you're practically suicidal, associating with that damn vampire."
"As my mother, you should have told me," she insisted. Dr. Diane could tell that she was surprised by the revelation of her many encounters with death, but the girl had inherited her stubbornness and wasn't going to let it cost her the argument. "You could have warned me and I would have been more prepared for all of-"
"How the hell did you expect to be prepared?" Dr. Diane was reaching the end of her patience: she'd never been one for coddling. "I told you, the curse wouldn't have mattered until-"
"Until what?" she cut off challengingly. "What, pray tell, could have made the fact that I'm possessed by our great-great-whatever-the-fuck-she-is grandmother a subject worth talking about?"
"Benji," she answered, lowering her voice to a growl. Mikaela rolled her eyes. "This isn't a joke! You think you can trust him, but-!"
"For all of his other agendas that you keep mentioning, he's the one who told me how to break the curse, which is more than I can say for you," she stated.
"Which you aren't planning on doing," she reminded her. "Killing Katherine is the only way, and you're letting Damon's feelings for her and your feelings for him get in the way of doing it." Mikaela snatched the grimoire and her copies off the desk, signaling that the conversation was nearing a close. "Mi-"
"Benji was there when I died," she interrupted angrily, "and Damon was the one who actually went to Georgia to make sure I came back home, even if he didn't need me to open the tomb. You, on the other hand-"
"He's nothing but trouble! Everyone dies around-!"
"-are never there!" she finished, grabbing her backpack and turning to the door.
"What are you planning to do, Kaela?" she called after her. "You can't have Damon on your side and break the curse, too. You know that."
"I'll figure it out," she stated, walking out of the office.
"Don't you walk away from me, Mikaela Greene!" Dr. Diane warned, storming after her. Mikaela was already out the front door when she waved over her shoulder, completely ignoring the authoritative tone in the woman's voice.
"See you tonight," she called. Dr. Diane growled and slammed the front door shut, feeling some of the frustration evaporate into the loud noise as a result of the action. Motherhood was a job she simply wasn't cut out for, and no one knew that better than she did. Not a day passed by that she didn't hate the curse, that she didn't wish things had turned out differently for her and her family.
Mikaela would never have any idea just how much damage Benji was capable of causing, and she was only just beginning to understand why the curse was a curse at all. She had no clue that, no matter how much she tried to, she would not get over her first love, not until Elizabeth left her body; she had no idea how many years Joseph had spent trying to fill up the space in her heart that only Nikolai could; she didn't have the slightest clue that Benji would do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted, even if that meant trampling over everything Mikaela cared about to get it.
She couldn't know how hard Dr. Diane had fought to end the curse before Mikaela could find out the true horror it could bring.
It wasn't every day your daughter turned thirteen years old. Diane stood outside her daughter's room, arms wrapped around herself as she debated entering. It had now been over thirteen years since graduation night, and while not much had happened, so much had changed. Joseph had taken on odd jobs and Zack had stepped in so that she could finish medical school, and while the world hadn't ended graduation night like she'd expected it to, they'd had to grow up much too fast to keep up with life. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door to Mikaela's room and stepped inside.
Even on her thirteenth birthday, the girl was scared of the dark. Diane stepped over to her daughter's bed and sat next to her sleeping form, simply observing her calm face. She had a thick set of bangs and had convinced the Sheriff's daughter to do temporary highlights in her hair; of all the colors in the world, she'd chosen the color blue. Those very curiosities were what she'd grown to love about the headstrong girl. It was strange how the one thing she hadn't wanted had turned out to be the single person she loved the most in the world. Diane reached over and touched her cheek softly, smiling when the teenager leaned into her hand.
"Love you too, Mom," she mumbled, licking her lips and snuggling into her pillow. Diane sighed and looked up, only slightly surprised by what she saw in the mirror across the room. She could see herself perched on the edge of her daughter's bed, but standing behind her was a third person. Donning a tattered, simple gown normally worn under clothes, a woman with tan skin, brown hair and striking green eyes looked back at her through the reflection, a solemn expression on her face. Diane had only seen her once in a vision Joseph had projected to her, but the woman herself and her voice, she was more than familiar with.
"Elizabeth," she greeted through tight lips. Elizabeth nodded unnecessarily. Diane tightened her jaw. "What are you doing here?"
"It's time," Elizabeth answered, the words entering Diane's mind without her having to speak them out loud.
"You waited until I was sixteen," Diane pressed, still not understanding. The ghost's expression didn't change.
"She's stronger than you because of her third eye. If I wait any longer, she'll build up a wall against me."
"You can wait another year," Diane insisted. "She's still afraid of the dark, for crying out-"
"I've waited long enough."
"She's my kid!" Diane exclaimed. "Please, you can keep me, just leave Mikaela out of this!"
"You know I can't do that," Elizabeth reminded her. Despite Diane's retorts, she stepped forward and placed her hands against the young teen's forehead. Diane looked down at her daughter, tears pouring out of her eyes when she saw her frown. When she looked up at the mirror again, Elizabeth was gone.
No, not gone.
Mikaela whimpered and turned over, seemingly from a nightmare. Her hands balled into fists and she gritted her teeth, resisting the intrusion. Diane watched helplessly as her daughter's discomfort quickly turned into violent fits, her face scrunched up in pain and exertion. "No, no," she whispered over and over again, quietly pleading. Diane reached out to touch her, but an arm like steel wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her to the doorway, much too strong to be human.
Diane struggled against the hold, trying to dig her nails into the man's skin to no avail. "Just let it happen," he said soothingly into her ear. She bared her teeth and thrashed her legs furiously, a wild animal tied down.
"God dammit Benji, she ruined my life!" she yelled. "I hate her, I hate her so much! Why can't she just die?"
Suddenly Mikaela froze, a scream choking in the back of her throat. Her eyes flew open, but rather than the warm brown Diane had grown to love, they glowed a bright, unnatural green. After a couple of seconds, she let out a breath and blinked, shaking her head. Benji was gone before she could see him, leaving Diane standing alone in the door frame. "Mom? Are you okay?" Mikaela asked, genuine confusion in her voice as she looked up at her mother. "You were yelling something just now." Her eyes still glowed green, but as far as Diane could tell, it was Mikaela speaking, not the ghost that would reside in her body for the rest of her life.
They both hardly had a chance to continue speaking before the room burst into flames.
Author's Note:
I'll wait for 5 reviews before uploading the next chapter... Which, trust me, is going to be exciting...