Important, please read: I sort of wrote myself into a corner with this fic due to the Soulmate lore I've been trying to construct, and I couldn't figure a way around it without cutting large parts of what I want to happen out. That only ended up frustrating me so instead of letting the fic die, I decided to shake some things up. So, basically, I added Kol to the pairing. One; It makes much more sense in the type of lore I have made for this story, and two; Kol's my favourite Original and I thought fuck it lol. If I've done this right, you'll see what I mean as we progress further through the fic. If this isn't your cup of tea, jump ship now.
Six: Sycophants, Socialites and Serial Killers
I
Sitting across the road from the Mystic Grill on a park bench beneath the canopy of a loblolly pine, Heather rolled an unlit cigarette between her lips and mentally debated a topic close to her heart.
The benefits and drawbacks of arson.
1: It would be absurdly easy to set the Muggle building across the street on fire, and yet on the other hand it would be so easy that it would be tantamount to no fun at all.
2: A well shot spell would mean no Muggle police would come looking for her, would know to look for her, but it would still attract unnecessary attention when a historic building in this quaint little town went up in smoke and ashes without a foreseeable cause.
3: It would alleviate the sudden unease Heather was trying to stomp down still persistently rising in her chest, but, as Hermione kept telling her, setting fire to things was no substitute for emotional vulnerability.
Spoilsport.
II
Snapping her fingers and lighting the end of her smoke with a zap of magic when she finally decided it was best not to do the same to the Mystic Grill, Heather drew in a long and clove scented breath. She had been sitting out here in the rising moonlight for twenty minutes now, eyeing the same door that jingled with non-the-wiser comers and goers, and it wasn't looking like she was going to be moving any time soon.
Heather has her reasons, of course, for this suspicious vigil as an alternative of just going in there and meeting her Soulmate. None of them remotely sensible, mind you, but reasons all the same.
For one, someone was either coming to this Grill right now, or was, currently, already sitting inside it. This someone had managed to track her down.
That should be warning enough.
The only people who knew Heather, knew of Heather, knew enough to follow her and, more importantly, find her, were sycophants, socialites and serial killers.
The only sort of company she kept these days.
Whoever was writing on her arm had managed to either get through those usual suspects to pick up her trail that led here, red flag number two, or knew enough about her and her… current predicament to know somehow, someway, she would be here.
Red flag three.
Three strikes and you're out.
III
Now, now, Heather knows what slippery slope of paranoia that might sound like, but you live the life she had and you learn very quickly that no one wants anything to do with you unless they want to use you for something.
But, you might say, they're your Soulmate. You know… rainbows and unicorns and true loves shite kiss. Surely all they want is the best for you? To get to know you? To finally be whole?
To that Heather says humbug.
What does a Soulmate even mean, really? Beyond those tacky romance cover novels with the ripped bodices and long-haired Fabio's and the teen dramas on the CW? Truly, to its barest bones, a soulmate was merely someone with an intrinsic star-stuff, soul if you will, that matched someone else's. Not the same, never the same but… complimenting. The brains to a brawn, the grit to the gentle-
The Lily to the James.
That was all.
Happily ever after's weren't guaranteed on the best of cases, Lily and James had barely lived to twenty-one case and point, and Heather fuckin' Potter? Yeah, she definitely was no 'best' case and was certainly no Lily or James.
Now who do you think would come along and match Heather?
Heather had, at least, enough self-awareness to know who she is and what she is. She's a bomb in biker boots, and whatever poor soul had been fundamentally attached to hers was either the most unluckiest person in the world or… or the type of person where arson is a reasonable response to.
In truth, Heather doesn't know what the hell to do with a Soulmate-
Let alone two.
IV
She hadn't figured it out before. Heather had no reason to, really. The paintings and the poetry came and went, and how was she to realize they weren't originally by the same hand?
But the writing on her arm doesn't lie like she can.
It's fatter, curlier, different to the neat script that had curled Scandinavian verses up and down her bicep. Heather knows that handwriting in an out, has grown up with it, into it, fought a war with it on her skin, knows exactly how the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted.
Fancy a bite to eat, love?
Different syntax too, more bold less lyrical.
So either her Olav Hauge enthusiast has unexpectedly been struck on the head, like those people who get brain trauma and wake up with a foreign accent, or there was never only one but two.
Two soulmates-
As if Heather wasn't having a hard time of it already. What the fuck is she meant to do with that? What is a reasonable response to this?
It was rare, certainly, to have more than one Soulmate, but it wasn't completely unheard of. Heather knew one in a triad herself, and heard rumours of a person with five Soulmates before.
She'd never envied them, only pitied.
This must be what Remus felt when he had spent decades with Sirius only to find Nymphadora's crooked spelling one morning on his neck when he went to shave.
A sudden, biting oh shit.
V
Sirius used to laugh in that wonderful way of his, with all his belly and all his teeth, and he'd ruffle Heather's hair when she asked how he felt about it and say that obviously Remus needed more than a singular Soulmate. He was too much for one pair of hands. You'll understand when you're older.
As a young teen, Heather hadn't understood the underlying subtext. Remus had been polite and easy to talk to, bookish and calm twenty-eight days a month. The only time he needed an extra pair of hands on deck was when he was carting his immense stash of chocolate out of its hidey-hole.
But Remus was more than his outward identity as the erudite professor. He'd been a man torn asunder by the beast he denied himself as. His self-hatred had been bigger than his self-perseverance some days, and his continued rejection of what he was inside meant he'd split himself up into easy to digest chunks that left him a broken, half a man.
He'd needed someone for the soft-spoken professor and someone for the marauding Werewolf. Tonks and Sirius had fit those roles respectively, allowing Remus to be both the man and the wolf and finally fuckin' whole.
They'd taught Remus that he didn't need to dichotomise himself apart for the orthodoxy of others, Remus and Tonks had taught Sirius to relax, to calm down, and Sirius and Remus had taught Tonks to live a little on the wild side, to be comfortable in her own metamorphous skin despite the distrust people put on her for being different.
And Heather's worse than Remus. So much worse. She's a patchwork girl of things that shouldn't be but were. Even if you only took her at a fundamental level, at the basis of what she is, Vampire, Lycan, Witch, then who fits where and how? One for the Vampire blood in her veins, one for the wolf in her heart-
And nothing for the Magic in her fingertips?
It doesn't make sense.
If there's more than one Soulmate for her, than two seems a little too short, don't you think?
Too much, as well.
Yet, the thing with quad-Soulmates is they weren't overtly equal. Normally there was a lynch pin, one who had both marks of the two-or-more bonded individuals, and those two-or-more only having the marks of the fulcrum.
And it doesn't matter if only one dies, doesn't somehow circumvent the death clause of a Soul Bond.
When Sirius had died Heather hadn't only lost her Godfather, Remus had quickly followed within seconds and then Tonks had fallen down in the Ministry and-
And it had been the worst day of her life, and a weekend spent at three funerals she had inadvertently caused.
That's what love does, Heather thinks. When you love someone and that person loves you in return, you're uniquely vulnerable. They have the power to hurt you that's like nothing else.
Being a soulmate hadn't stopped Remus from believing Sirius had been the one to hand over Lily and James to Voldemort, and the supposed betrayal had made Remus run from himself, from the wizarding world for years before Heather's third year and the truth came to light. The fact that Remus had believed Sirius could have done something so foul had nearly crushed her Godfather in return, and left him rotting without a friend in Azkaban for most of his life.
Soulmates aren't picture perfect postcards like the movies and books would tell you. They're people with flaws and shortcomings, who sometimes get it wrong, with the power to gut you with very little effort.
That's terrifying.
VI
So what does that say about Heather, then? That she's too much to handle for one pair of hands? That not only does she have a weak point in her Soulmate, she now has two? That, maybe, instead of rejoicing in someone, or someones, who could possibly understand her like most other people would she's seeing danger in every corner because WHY THE HELL WOULDN'T SHE?!
Soulmates aren't the ones who make you happiest, no. They're instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope-
But go down like misery.
Every pair or triad or group of Soulmates Heather has ever known has ended up in tragedy. Lily and James; dead. Sirius, Remus, and Tonks; dead. Albus and Grindelwald: dead after one tried to conquer the world. Hermione and Draco: still barely talking and Hermione unable to visit his home where she was tortured. Timothée and Marianna; double dead. Frank and Alice Longbottom: still in a mental institution barely recognizing their own reflection let alone each other. Most likely wishing they were dead. Petunia and Vernon: happy, but happy in the way of only being able to be while everyone else is miserable. A death on its own.
Does she need to go on?
Heather has too much to deal with right now, between her Vampirism, Lycanthropy, and her mounting hunger, coupled with her newly discovered undead daddio, she's being stretched too thin across a skewed board, and she's never been the most stable of individuals on her best days.
Heather doesn't need two extra pairs of hands-
She needs a nap.
VII
So here Heather sits in the shadows, puffing on a quickly running out smoke, contemplating each and every face that came toddling towards the Grill door with a quizzical is that them?
The exhausted man with the brief case who was running late by how he kept checking his watch, was he her Soulmate? Merlin, he looked like he thought cinnamon in his coffee was adventurous. He'd have a stroke if he discovered magic, never mind the assured lifetime of missionary sex that would bore Heather out her skull.
The pretty little thing in the red heels? She looks like she'd have an aneurysm when Heather left her wet towels on the bathroom floor, disregarding the dead bodies the Tribrid would stack in the basement from her new diet.
What about him? Humdrum adidas boy with the light up fuckin' sneakers? Heather would sooner face Tom Riddle again than a life with him and his obnoxiously gelled hair. Think of the poor pillow cases.
Heather flicked away the used cigarette butt, watching it spark off the pavement as it bounced away into the night, knowing exactly what Hermione would say if she was here and hearing her thoughts.
You're deflecting with callous humour again, Heather. You have such low opinion of yourself that you pre-emptively anticipate rejection by rejecting yourself and others before anyone else can.
Circe, even a whole sea away and Heather can't escape Hermione's psychoanalysis, even if it was imaginary. She should really see a shrink about her waning conscience sounding more and more like her friend-
"Niklaus thought you might be shrewd enough not to come in but audacious enough to at least try and sneak a peek. I'm glad to see he was right."
VIII
"Fuck!"
Heather cursed as she violently startled from the voice abruptly loud and crystal clear behind her, jolting to a stand. It had been years, years, since anyone or anything had been able to sneak up on her and-
And her eyes narrowed immediately, head snapping around so fast that if it were a Muggle, certainly it wasn't, it couldn't be if they snuck up on her, standing behind then they wouldn't have been able see much more than a blur.
Merlin, even a Supe would have a hard time tracking Heather's movements at full speed.
But it's not a Wizard behind her, no robe or cloak in sight. Not a Werewolf either, not with the full moon above their heads and not a fury underbelly to be seen. Instead Heather finds-…
Well, she finds a man.
A man in a fuckin' three-piece suit.
He's handsome, Heather would give him that much, especially, someway more so, in the cold and distant moonlight. He's tall, maybe five-eleven, a foot bigger than Heather's measly four-eleven. He's lanky too, from what she could see underneath the suit jacket, muscular hiding in a narrow notch lapel. His hair is combed well and shiny-soft, dark brown made almost black in the night. A sleek crown above a broad and striking face that somehow, despite, by Heather's reckoning being in his… late twenties maybe early thirties, kept it's boyish charm.
"You make a habit of sneaking up on isolated girls in the dark of a park in the middle of the night, mate? Might want to watch that. Someone might draw some nasty conclusions about it."
And he smiles, he fuckin' smiles, and of course he has bloody dimples.
"Only to those who intend to stand up their respective dinner date. I believe ten minutes is considered fashionably late and anything more than fifteen to be discourteous."
IX
Heather stalls where she stands, eyes jumping to this mans arm. He has his hands in his slack's pockets, suit sleeves all the way down to cuffed wrist, and she can't get a glimpse at his uncovered skin.
Can't see if he's hiding any written mark still loitering on her own.
Quicker yet her eye cuts back up. Up and up and up to a forehead. His skin is clear and pale-
And there, barely there, a speckle of a sense that Heather picks up like a bloodhound.
A concealing charm.
He has something veiled on his forehead. Belatedly, she suspects it might be a scar.
Now this is where most would smile and perhaps brush a lock of hair behind their ear in nerves. They'd croon a hello, and blush very prettily, perhaps one leg coquettishly kicking over the other in a Bambi-eyed dance.
That's what all the Soulmate movies portray, isn't it?
Yet Heather scowls, and her feet brace as if she's expecting a fight not a waltz, and there's nothing coquettish or Bambi about her. She's on edge, suddenly choking on the unease that had lurched up her gullet, and with a flare of nostrils she scents the breeze.
He smells like the honey in costly whisky, the taste of fresh rain in the air that pops with a twang of black cherry. It's enough to make her mouth water, her throat to seize in thirst, and for the crunch of her gut to nearly send her over in half.
She doesn't, Heather keeps herself tall and straight through sheer bloody will, but there is an uncomfortable ache to her gums that threaten a fallen fang.
"Trust me, I don't think you'd like what I deem as dinner anyway."
The grin on her face is nothing short of vicious.
"But then again you smell like you're on your own liquid diet, Vampire."
X
He doesn't understand. Obviously he doesn't understand. How can he? Vampires snack on Muggles, they're not used to being the ones snacked on, and so they haven't developed any sort of prey-survival instincts one should have faced with a thing like Heather.
The man kicks off from the pine tree he leaned against, and he stole a long stride forward and Heather steals one away just as far back. She has too, for her, for him.
The ache in her gums roars to a burning thrum.
Why the fuck does he smell so good-
He looks put out for a moment, a falter, a frown, but he can't know, can he? Heather's hungry, and terrible things happen when she's hungry. Not just for blood, but for everything. She wants God, she wants poetry, she wants danger and freedom and goodness and sin-
That's what comes of hungering for something; you forget to check if it's rotten before you gobble it down.
"You shouldn't have come here."
She manages to bite out from clenched teeth, and she feels the heat of her eyes radiating out, growing horribly in the black moon of her rising pupil.
"You really shouldn't have come here."
XI
He took another step, and Heather mirrors herself the opposite way, has to or else she's going to leap and tear through his neck like tissue paper-
"Heather, I understand-"
He doesn't.
He fuckin' doesn't.
And so hungry, starving, Heather doesn't have the mental fortitude to battle her instincts and pick up on the use of her name despite her never giving it.
"Leave."
She barks, and its more a growl than a word, a terribly tangled mess that catches on her sharp teeth.
She wonders which one this is, the poet or the painter, if the other one is close by or far away, wonders yet why it matters at all given what she has to do.
"Leave and don't look back."
And then she takes her own advice, racing off into the night. She thinks he might have followed for a little bit, but she loses him quicker yet. She's small and fast and hard to catch.
And also a fuckin' mess.
XII
Stefan went to close the basement door behind him, already knowing from the bottom of the staircase before he'd began walking up that Damon would be in the hall waiting to pounce. His brother doesn't even wait for the door to click fully shut before piping up.
"You tuck Katherine in all cosy and warm?"
Rolling his eyes, Stefan flipped the lock on the door, turning his back on his brother.
"She's in the vervain cell at the far end."
"Mason?"
"In the one furthest from her, turned and chained. He'll hold for tonight."
The lock catches, useless against Vampires but a good deterrent against any wandering mortal should they come poking around the Salvatore house to find two seemingly human prisoners in their cellar. Stefan found Damon propped up against the wall next to the painting of their grandfather when he finally span back around.
"What are we going to do with them tomorrow?"
Damon, listlessly, shrugs.
"That's tomorrows problem, but we can't exactly just let them loose. They did try and kill us, after all."
"Elena?"
Stefan asked, and Damon pushed off from the wall, heading towards the front parlour room where the bourbon cabinet was waiting to welcome him.
After the day they had, Stefan might just join him in a stiff drink.
"Home safe and sound, Prince Charming. Saw her through the door myself as you dealt with our… guests."
Rounding the corner, Stefan bit the bullet when it seemed his brother was determined not to.
"Are we not going to talk about the fact that you have-"
Rattle-thwunk-BANG
The two brothers stalled in the hall, the echo of the crash from the front of the house bobbing off the stone walls before cautiously eyeing each other and then flashing for the stairs. There was many things Stefan thought he might see as he spotted the front door to their home, where the sharp, loud noise came from. The Council, a Werewolf, maybe one of Damon's ex-lovers come for revenge-
Again.
But that is not what he finds. Oh no.
Door completely off its hinges, Heather stood in the crux of it with the moonlight at her back, holding it by the handle where she'd clearly tried opening it, found it locked, and then ripped it right off.
Unceremoniously, she dropped the door right in the hall with a startling boom as the wood splintered on tile.
"I'll fix that later."
She slurred, obviously catching sight of the brothers standing motionless on the stairs before she went wobbling down the hallway without so much as a hello or invite.
XIII
"What the hell happened to you?"
It's Damon who speaks, catching up first to the girl looking unsteady on her feet, careening for the bourbon cabinet Damon had been after only moments before. It's also not the question Stefan would ask, personally leaning towards a more cautious what do you want?
But Damon isn't wrong, Stefan sees as he finally gets close enough to get a good look, the girl yet again struggling with the door of the drinks dresser only to rip it right off to Damon's dramatic wince, throwing it somewhere over her shoulder where it crashes with another deafening thud and something that sounds like crystal shattering in its wake. She has twigs and pine needles in her hair, and the leather jacket from earlier was missing, replaced with her white t shirt now ripped and stained dark red. Not quite the right shade for blood, but perhaps spilled wine. Her jeans weren't fairing much better, and her feet-
Were shoeless, little sock clad toes peeking out the denim.
"I found some liquor stores."
"And…"
Stefan asked, only to wish he hadn't as the girl span around faster than he could keep up with, with a look that said are you dumb? voice dropping low as if she thought he was having trouble understanding words.
"I drank them."
Right… well that explained the slurring and the swaying. It took a lot for a Vampire to get drunk, no doubt it took even more of the hard stuff to get whatever this girl was inebriated as much as she was, and it didn't appear as if she was slowing down any time soon by the way she twisted the cap off a bottle of bourbon-
And downed the entire lot.
Damon made the mistake of walking closer, reaching for the bottle, but it wasn't his biggest mistake. His biggest mistake was what he said next.
"Maybe you've had enough."
The bottle lip fell from Heather's mouth slowly, green gaze rolling towards the dark-haired Vampire.
"Had enough?"
She asked purposefully, hollow.
"Had enough?"
She eventually repeated when no one answered, both caught in the snare of green, sounding startlingly sober and sombre, disbelieving. The bottle fell down, still in grip, swinging at her hip as it sloshed its little remains down onto the floor below with a splash that appeared, to Stefan at least, a little like a warning bell.
XIV
"Had enough, he says."
Heather chuckled dryly, coldly, attention quick and stiff on Damon.
Stefan has seen this look before, the unholy flicker in her eye. He's seen it in Damon time and time again, when he's upset about something, hurt, when he decides to set fire to everything around him just because he could.
It's the look that says I'm about to do something reckless.
"Where was that with him?"
She uses the bottle neck to gesture to Stefan, and the man shrinks back at the burning glare shot his way.
"You know… when he was draining my mother dry? Did you tell him he'd had enough? Or did you egg him on? You did, didn't you? Because it was fun. For you, for him, a big bloody game. So let's have some more fun, yeah? I'm up for a laugh."
The bottle in her hand smashes, shatters to tiny shards of glass and splattering liquor on hardwood, and Heather doesn't flinch, doesn't so much as bat an eyelash-
Because unexpectedly she's before Stefan, toe to toe with her small fist around his throat, squeezing.
"Heather-"
But it's too late, Heather has a hand up, flashing magic, and Damon freezes where he stands, and the hand around Stefan's throat constricts so much he can't speak or scream or yell.
"Shall we do a redo? An old favourite, right? How about I drain your brother dry and then rip his head off, and you encourage me to go for more? Do you think he's hiding a kinder surprise like my mother was? Or is he just filled with repressed urges like a suspect?"
Even though Stefan can't do much more than squirm, claw at the hand at his neck, Damon seems to still be able to speak even if he couldn't move.
"You don't want to do this."
"Don't I?"
Heather demanded, and her grip tightens a fraction. If Stefan was mortal, even a younger Vampire, he'd be dead by now, perhaps even left in two pieces.
"Because it sure as fuck looks like I do."
Damon clearly strained against whatever magical bindings were holding him, but it was no use. They held fast and he held still, even when his mouth ran a mile a minute.
"Because I've been where you are now."
The grip around Stefan's neck tightens anew, and it's enough to grind the bones in his throat painfully, his spinal column compressing, earning a breathless squeak that Stefan hoped portrayed a not helping, Damon! tone.
"And where is that, huh? Being the one in charge?"
Damon wasn't taking the bait.
"The place where you think hurting others will somehow make the hurt inside go away. So you drink and you curse and you play the bad guy because that's all you think you have left. Killing Stefan isn't going to change what you are. Killing me isn't going to change what happened. Killing this whole town won't change a damn thing. It won't make the hurt go away."
Stefan stalls in his struggling, suddenly realizing Damon might not just be talking to the girl who has him by the neck but to himself, a younger version of him, the one who roved from country to country carving his way with corpses.
The girls face washes slack, the hold on his throat diminishes, and-
"No it won't."
Heather agrees softly, tragically, a self-aware wolf, but then she's smiling, and her fangs are clicking out, not one but double fangs, mean looking white teeth on either side of her front pearly ones, and her eyes don't trundle to black and veins like a Vampire, but her pupils balloon large and dark, and the sclera bleeds to a blood red.
"But it sure would be one hell of a ride while it lasts, right?"
There was no way to describe the pain of having his neck torn into. It happens so fast that Stefan doesn't really hear Damon's cry of no! can only be washed away in the agony that is teeth ripping through flesh and muscle.
It somehow hurts more than when Katherine had turned him, burns with something Stefan can't name, an atrocious fire that strikes up an inferno in the blood of his neck that rages outwards and inwards until his innards feel liquified.
Then she's gulping, guzzling large mouthfuls down with a rumbling of a satisfied purr in a rib cage, one, two, three, and Stefan can't move no matter how hard he tries, as if her bite was paralytic, venomous, and-
And swiftly he's dropped to the floor.
XV
His hands rush to his neck, back in his control, fingers slipping in the blood still oozing and the flap of flesh left frayed and dangling like the threads of a cut tapestry. Damon's moving too, diving for him, grabbing him by the shoulders.
"Stefan?"
He questions anxiously with a jolt that makes an shaky Stefan's eyes roll about in his skull.
"Stefan?"
The Vampire in question dazedly blinks upwards.
"I'm fine-"
He lies. The bite still burns ungodly on his neck, a branding that doesn't feel like it's healing as it should, but he's still breathing, still blinking, still relatively undead.
"I'm fine."
Damon whirled on Heather.
"Why would you-"
But Damon cuts himself off, and when Stefan follows his gaze, haggling to a sit, he can see why.
The girl is standing still where she had been before throwing Stefan down, his own blood smeared across her face, over her nose, nearly up to her eye where she'd nuzzled in and bitten down hard on a vein that popped, but she looks… she looks confused.
"I'm not thirsty anymore."
It's dazed, her voice, stunned and bewildered, and Damon scoffs, pulling away from his brother now that he knew he was fairly okay.
"No shit."
He scoffed out.
"You nearly drained Stefan-"
"No."
Heather interjected, finally snapping to, eyeing Damon as if it was the first time she'd ever seen a Vampire before.
"You don't understand. I'm not thirsty anymore."
XVI
Stefan winces as he shirks off his plaid overshirt to press into his still bleeding neck.
"Seven years-"
Heather began, a little breathlessly.
"Seven years since I woke up to this horrendous hunger, and nothing I've tried so far has worked. Oh, I've managed to lower it to something barely tolerable, something that didn't feel like my insides were being twisted up into knots and loops but… but it was always there. Every day of every second of every hour this unquenchable thirst getting worse and worse and worse until I couldn't think straight… how-"
Heather's green eyes, now back to their original colouring, lit up.
"It's you."
"Me?"
Damon asked uncomprehendingly.
"What did I do?"
"Not what you did, dummy-"
Heather bats back just as easy, carelessly, as if they both hadn't just watched her tear into Stefan like a juice box.
"It's what you are."
Her answering laugh sounds a little broken, a little mad, a whole lot alive.
"After everything, all this hunting, all this pain… and it was you. He's your brother. He has your blood. You're the one who made me. All this time and I thought it was just Vampires I was thirsting for, but it isn't, It's you. It's always been fuckin' you."
Comprehension comes to the room just as the bottle had broken, with a smash and a rain of something clear and sharp.
"I'm the one who made you in the womb, my blood that gave you life…"
Damon trails off, but Stefan's there to croakily finish, coming to a stand on precarious knees. Whatever poison was in Heather's bite, it was still pumping through him, making the room spin in technicolour wonder, a bit like he suspected human LCD to do.
The blood is slowing now, but the wound isn't healing.
"And it's his blood that will sustain you. Mine too by the looks of it, at least a little."
The realisation lays heavy in the room, thick and dense like a blanket of downy fur until-
Until Heather grins and, from who knows where, pulls out a large knife.
XVII
She takes one step towards a rigid Stefan, blade tight but confidently lax in her hand, raised just right.
"Well let's start on some donations and I'll be on my way-"
Damon boldly, but a little hurriedly, stepped in between the two, snagging the knife from Heathers grip.
"Oh no you don't."
He catches the smaller girl by the arms after carelessly throwing the knife away onto a couch, and from over his shoulders Stefan can see she doesn't look too impressed by the interruption, looks ready to snarl and snap her teeth in turn.
"If you want Stefan's or my blood, especially a continued inflow of it, then there's going to be some ground rules."
Heather hesitates, perhaps a little bowled over, like Stefan, of Damon's confidence that he had anything to bargain with.
"First, no killing Stefan. Second, no more wrecking our house. Third, no killing Stefan-"
"You've mentioned that one twice now."
Heather humphs and shakes Damon's grip off, but she doesn't lung or attack him so maybe they're making progress.
"Yeah, well, I think you need it said twice."
Damon waved her off before continuing unhindered.
"Fourth, you stay here where I can help you."
"Here?!"
Now it's Stefan's turn to cut in, puzzled and alarmed in a way he hasn't been in a few decades, and was it just him or was the wallpaper moving in a tango?
"She just openly admitted she wants to eat us, Damon."
Damon-
Of course, rolled his eyes.
"And she would be very stupid to kill us and run out of the food source, right? You're not stupid are you, Heather?"
Heather is, instead of answering, pointedly glaring at Stefan.
"I only need one of you alive-"
"Ah, ah, ah."
Damon tuts, far too merry for this topic of conversation, and, in Stefan's opinion, far too delighted in his brother's discomfort.
"Remember rule One and Three? I know it's a hard rule to follow, I have trouble with it most days when he's boring and brooding, but, trust me, Stefan has his moments of usefulness. So… deal?"
"Damon, you can't be serious-"
But Heather's chewing it over, eyeing Stefan like he's prime steak, and suddenly she's nodding.
"Deal."
Damon grins and claps his hands on Heather's shoulder, squeezing almost fondly, the Salvatore crest on his ring glinting in the low light.
"Wonderful."
Wonderful? Not the exact word Stefan would use. Mad, he would prefer, perhaps suicidal too.
But… but.
Side by side, eye to eye, it was hard to dissociate the two. She looks like Damon, achingly so, too much, acted like him to, came whirling in when you least expected to kick up havoc like a sandstorm and-
Stefan loves his brother dearly. For his faults, for all his schemes, for all the times they've tried to kill each other, Stefan loves his brother.
And in some fucked up way, this was his niece.
"Deal."
Stefan agreed, only to earn himself a snarl from the girl.
"No one was asking you, captain forehead. Be a good snack and keep quiet-"
And perhaps he'd forgotten how annoying Damon could be, and now there was two of them.
One with a penchant for their blood.
"Oh please, you-"
Knock, knock, knock.
XVIII
The living room fell to silence at the knocking on the front door-
Well, not the front door, Stefan knows. Heather had torn it clear off on her way in, but it must have been coming from the frame where it had once stood.
Heather glances to them, popping a quizzical, unbothered brow.
"One of yours?"
Stefan frowns in reply.
"Not this late. Yours?"
The knocking came again, clearly impatient, and Heather helpless shrugs.
"Who would know to look for me here?"
The knocking doesn't come again, replaced by a voice. Husky, deep, shaded with a British accent, shouting through the open doorway.
"Think you're probably going to want to let me in!"
Next Chapter: Heather answers the door to the man she stood up at the Grill with blood on her face…
A.N: I know, I know, it's been forever but life's been sucky and this is the best I can do right now lol. I hope you all liked it anyway. I also know a lot of you were expecting a full get together for Elijah, Heather and Klaus, but it didn't feel very authentic on Heather's part to just go and have a midnight tea party. At this moment in the story, she's sort of severely traumatized by everything, the war and her constant hunger, distrusting of even the slightest hint of happiness on the horizon due to how much she's lost, and has a good dose of self-hatred coupled with self-martyrdom complex, enough to think whatever soulmate she has (not knowing the type of people they are lol) to believe they would be better off without her.
And how does she do that? By going on a huge bender and trying to prove she's not good news.
This in turn brought up some emotional vulnerability that I wanted to showcase in Heather if only to show she's a lot like Damon, in a not so good way. Put into an emotionally uncomfortable situation, they both lash out and be giant fuckin' drama queens about it lol. But its these faults that make them realistic characters too, and I wanted that to be underpinned in this chapter.
Additionally, sometimes trauma responses aren't pretty. In a lot of fiction I find trauma to be represented as an almost sanitized thing, where PTSD and other traumatic reactions are whittled down to panic attacks (not saying panic attacks are pretty but they aren't the only representation of PTSD). Sometimes trauma shows in individuals in some nasty ways, in repeating cycles of abuse (looking at you Klaus), or in self sabotaging or destructive behaviours (cough Heather cough), and I really wanted to show that and continue to show that here. Sometimes trauma isn't nice, sometimes it's mean and it's biting, and that's okay. It doesn't make people monsters; it only makes them human (and I think that's a good message for this fic).
As for her outward distaste for Stefan, it's not only what he did to her mother, as she blames both him and Damon for that, but because he's technically her uncle. As we know, Heather's got some deep-rooted trauma around that word and role, and though it's not really Stefan's fault, I wanted Heather to be guarded and hostile around him to show not only is she not dealing very well with her own horrendous past, in fact she's merely disassociating from it by refusing to acknowledge it, but she's doing the only thing she really knows how to do when she's in pain. Lashing out. It's actually pretty tragic and sad if you think about it, and I wanted that melancholy to follow Heather a little bit before she starts working through stuff. Which she will, slowly but surely, she will.
This is a story about love and healing, or I want it to be that way, but to get to that point, Heather's got to get a little messy first.
Finally, I will say without spoiling it that next chapter is pretty much all Elijah, Klaus and Heather, so that should be fun.
Well, that's it folks for this chapter. Hope you all liked it. As always, thank you so much for the engagement, I hope you are all enjoying this so far, and I will hopefully see you all again soon with a freshly ironed chapter. Don't forget, if you have a few spare moments, and a few thoughts bouncing around your head, don't forget to drop a review!
P.S: I have a Holly Black, Victoria Erickson and Aldous Huxley quotes stashed in here, and a little nod to Supernatural, can you find them?
