A/N: No, no, it wasn't some early April Fool's, I'm really back! Lmao
Dark Paradise, Devil in Me, and Rise are all up and running as regularly as I possibly can! I'm about halfway through Supernatural season 10 for Devil in Me so far but the first half of TVD's season 5 is just brutal. Silas and the Travelers were always kind of a joke to me -shrug-
Maybe I'll just have Saskia shred him. I haven't decided yet. LOL

Follow/fave/review/Facebook/YouTube!

xoxo
Kuraki-chan

02: And I Am Left to Face Me.

Nova's head was throbbing. It was beginning to feel like claws scratching at her brain and skull. No matter how many times she bashed her head against the door or floor the pain wouldn't stop. With what raspy voice she had left, she let out a volatile scream before hitting her head so hard into the metal that it left a deep indent. When she opened her eyes again, she was back at the motel she ended up at before returning to Mystic Falls. She was sprawled back out on the bed with the scent of blood and death filling the room. Although they were only corpses strewn about the room, Nova could still hear each and every one of them screaming, pleading, and gurgling. Her eye twitched as she stared up at the no longer white ceiling from so many people smoking in the room. It was too different than the way she had been hallucinating for days. Something wasn't right.

It hadn't been easy to get inside of Nova's head, even with Damon's help. Zina almost could have admired her sister's mental strength. She could tell that Nova still laid by the door which made it a little easier for her to access. The barely younger Romanian sat down cross legged outside of her sister's cell. She held one hand up to Damon and placed the other with her palm against the door. Through the connection she shared with Damon, Zina could find her way into her sister's head, but getting through it was a whole other issue. It was three more days of scraping and kicking when Damon gave up. Zina decided she didn't need him anymore and still attempted at forcing her way into Nova's mind. Damon retreated upstairs for some whiskey while Zina pressed both of her hands onto the metal door.

For a solid while she felt nothing. She certainly wasn't about to tell them that since she returned from the dead she felt no connection to her power or even being a vampire. She had tried a couple of blood bags that went down smooth, but felt nothing. No fangs, no strength, only speed and compulsion for a limited time before she crashed and got a migraine. Zina grit her teeth and dug her coffin shaped nails into the metal, scraping it loudly. Rage and determination exploded within her. The pupils in her eyes finally stood out as her irises glowed a bright, hibiscus red. Her hair blew around gently from a nonexistent wind in the cellar as a darkness crept into the whites of her eyes. She could feel the connection finally being made into her sister's mind; her claws tearing through Nova's barriers. Veins appeared beneath her eyes and finally she could feel her fangs extending as her lips pulled back. Not a damn person, creature, or magic would keep Zina Arete Vasile down for long.

Nova almost believed she was wrong when she was violently thrust back into the basement with the same excruciating pain in her skull. Perhaps the hallucinations were just getting more painful as she dessicated. The pain came back in full force as it had the first time, prompting her to start hitting her head again. The vision that haunted her that time, however, was one she hadn't relived in a very long time.

She never did remember what state it was, or how she ended up there. She knew she endured another birthday without a trace of Damon still when she wandered, murdering and feeding everywhere she went. She was about to leave the miserable state after draining her eleventh body dry and dumping it somewhere when she saw a woman and her teen daughter walking home from a malt shop. Something about the woman's face enraged her. It reminded her oddly of her own mother's and she ended up stalking the mother and daughter to their home. Nova could see through the windows all of the photos covering their walls. Clearly they weren't hurting for money, as photos still weren't terribly cheap in 1958. They were a happy family with a husband, wife, and daughter. But where was the darling husband so late at night?

As Nova made her way around the house she realized that the family kept certain weapons laid about the home; machetes over the mantle, shotguns in the garage, and silver daggers 'decoratively' hung in the kitchen. Car lights brightened up the driveway and yard, prompting Nova to take to the shadows. She watched a man get out of the car with a heavy duffel bag and walk into the house. As a vampire, she couldn't miss the scent of blood and death all over him and his belongings. She watched him go to his family and get a hug from his daughter and a kiss from his wife. Fire burned in the pit of her gut. She wasn't certain what exactly about the whole ordeal made her so angry, but without her humanity she just didn't care. After the fifth birthday without Damon she couldn't bear it anymore and shut off her humanity.

Even still Nova wasn't sure what possessed her to pick the lock and turn the knob on their front door after they went to sleep that night. Yet when her feet crossed the threshold she was filled with a dark and sadistic joy. Not a mere scent of the house didn't reek of human, so how was she able to cross without an invitation? Even though humans resided there, did one not own the house? Whatever the reasoning, Nova didn't have a care in the world. She traipsed silently through the house and up the stairs, loathing every family photo with each step.

It was mother dearest that first attracted her with pure infuriation so the mother she sought out first and foremost. The parents' bedroom was at one end of the hall and the daughter's on the opposite end. Convenient for her, yet foolish for them. The wooden door opened slowly without a sound. It was almost as if everything had been muted with how silently Nova could move and operate.

She walked up to the mother's side of the bed where the woman laid flat on her back, giving Nova every detail of her face. She looked just like a younger Alina Vasile the way her jaw and cheekbones were set. Her raven hair fanned out against the white pillows almost too evenly. Even her stupid nose. Beside her laid her husband, blissfully asleep. Though Nova didn't know or care, he had a total of four hours sleep in two days so he was entirely out cold back home in his own bed. Still Nova remained fixated on the woman. She despised that a random stranger, and a weak human at that, could look anything like Alina Vasile. Without warning Nova snatched the woman out of bed by her throat as hard as she could squeeze without killing her yet.

Her husband felt the movement immediately and jumped up with a gun from under his pillow. Nova held his wife with her back against Nova's chest and a hand still firmly around her throat. "Unless you've got wooden bullets in there you're not even going to make me flinch," she hissed with her thick Romanian accent.

"What are you?" he demanded, his stance unwavering in the slightest.

"I'm a monster," she grinned, baring her fangs as the veins appeared under her darkening eyes. "And I'm a lot faster and stronger than you."

Nova tore ruthlessly into the woman's throat, her blood gurgling scream echoing through the entire house. Gunshots rang next but as his wife's lifeless corpse dropped to the floor he watched the holes in Nova's abdomen heal themselves instantly. She advanced on the man who continued to shoot until his clip was empty and the wall prevented him from moving any further. He started to sweat and panic knowing his fourteen year old and barely trained daughter was sound asleep down the hall.

"Go ahead and kill me," he told Nova boldly. "I only ask that you allow my daughter to live." She quirked a brow and stopped in her tracks. "You were somebody's daughter once, were you not? Just allow her to live even with the horrific memory of her parents' murders."

Nova pondered the idea before offering an uncaring shrug. "If you really want that poor kid to endure life after seeing what I've done to you and your stupid wife then I would be glad to torment her that way. It will really show her what kind of monsters lurk this Earth." She smirked and grabbed him by the throat.

"I already know there are monsters that walk amongst us," came the overly brave voice of a pubescent teen girl. "My dad was sure to teach me that young."

Her head turned slowly without her grip relenting even the slightest on his windpipe. The child looked similar to her mother with dark hair and pointed features. In the dim lighting Nova thought her eyes were almost as green as her own. She nearly laughed when she saw the machete in the girl's hands. It was smaller than the ones over the mantle had been, telling Nova that it was the girl's personal machete she probably kept by her bed. "Yes," she humored as she dragged the father off the wall and not touching the floor, "but not even your daddy here knows about monsters like me."

Nova bit as hard as she could into his carotid artery, getting a satisfying mouthful of warm blood before shredding her teeth through his skin and sending blood spraying across everything. The girl was visibly shaken and let out a frightened gasp. Her grip on the machete shook. She took a terrified step back as her dad's body fell limply to the floor on top of her mom. Their blood pooled across the hardwood floor without ever touching Nova's heels. With her long legs she stepped over the corpses still without touching any blood and towards the girl.

"Stay away from me!" She screamed before running back down the hall with her machete.

"Enjoy living your life according to the nightmare I set for you!" Nova laughed as she strut towards the stairs. The girl's door slammed shut and she heard it lock. "Go ahead and keep on living, child. You live on my whim now. Never forget this night or my face because you will never have the chance to kill me."

Nova was severed from the memory, watching herself walk out of the house rather than reliving it like she had the rest. She watched herself stand at the end of their driveway and light up a cigarette before vanishing down the street. She stood there frozen after being forced to remember what she had done. Even with the body count she had she still never understood what provoked her so deeply to destroy that random family or why it held such significance in her life.

"Because they were Vasiles," she realized at long last as the police cruisers sped onto the scene. As quickly as officers ran into the house, two ran out with the girl wrapped in a blanket. With all of the headlights Nova could finally see clearly that her eyes were in fact a bright green. Her mother's sharp features in her face were merely a base for her father's softer ones. It reminded her oddly of- "Siya and Zarya…"

"Yes, sister, you killed Siya Vasile's grandmother," came Zina's voice beside her suddenly.

Nova jumped at least a foot away from her as her sister just stared at the scene with her hands behind her back. She was cleaned up and wearing modern clothes. What was going on? "Zina," she hissed. "What the hell is this?"

"This is what I've been trying to figure out for days - your deeply rooted crime that darkens you each time you shut it off. The one thing you can never take back; killing a member of our clan."

She scoffed. "I killed our parents just as well. Mother was a Vasile blood yet it did nothing for me."

"And that was why you sought out Lena, wasn't it? Because she looked like mother. That is what damned you, Nova. Alina Vasile was not innocent anymore. She had done horrible things because she was compelled to. You killing her only released her from the misery that chained her everyday. But Lena here, she was a wife and a good mother. They minded their own business even though Daniel, her husband, was an American Hunter. You see, the Men of Letters were destroyed a few months prior to this which left Daniel to hunt on his own rather than be told when and where by the Men of Letters. Lena wasn't a hunter, but Daniel made sure she knew how to protect herself and little Audra."

"Why are you telling me all of this? What are you doing here? Answer me, Zina!"

Nova had grabbed her sister by the hem of her v-neck which made her smirk lightly. "You and Damon truly are one in the same. It's quite amazing, really."

Her grip tightened, fangs bared. "Stay away from Damon."

"What are you going to do about it, sora mai mare?" With ease she shoved her older sister away and onto the ground. "You killed an innocent, human Vasile out of spite and hatred for our own mother's face when you shut off your humanity for, what? The very first time I think it was? This is the event that caused your spiral, Nova. You knew what you were doing was wrong, that there was more to the picture than your hatred was allowing you to see, and you fed into it anyways. Keep feeding it and it will become you. That's not strength, Nova. That is weakness because you allow something so trivial to consume you."

Nova was forced back into her painfully slowly dessicating and detoxing body, her head slamming (that time) accidentally against the door from the force. "I think this is going to be my best torture yet," Zina's voice sounded clearly in the cell with her. She jumped when she saw her sister standing above her. "You can't get rid of me this time, sora mai mare."

"Just stay the hell away from me," she muttered as she tried to crawl away.

Zina slammed her sister against the door by her throat. "No, you see, this ends when you can't take it anymore. When you're all done pitching your fit and want to a grown up with the rest of us. Right now, sister, I own you. And I'm going to snap you back before Remiel can break you down."

"I've really started to hallucinate from hunger now," Nova laughed against her sister's grip. Her head lolled about laxidasily. "Even if you were trying to haunt me again, I don't care. You don't matter, Zina."

Her grip tightened so hard that Nova could actually feel it. "I am not a ghost this time around, Nova." Her bracelet shimmered in Nova's peripheral vision causing her eyes to slightly widen. "You are not getting rid of me."

She snarled and balled her fists at her side. "Then I guess I'm just going to have to kill you this time." Even with the next to zero strength she had, Nova forced her fist through Zina's chest and grabbed her heart. She squeezed until she felt it pop and Zina dropped to the cold floor. Nova started to laugh loudly as she held herself tall against the door.

"Not today, sora mai mare." Her eyes widened in horror and gave way to a twitch. "You're my little bitch in every sense of the word."

Nova watched with fury as the body of Zina she ripped the heart out of vanished before her eyes. Her sister's voice had echoed through the cell until she reformed sitting on the cot with her arms and legs crossed. "That's not possible! Not even for either of us!"

Zina laughed a little as she stood. "Your world right here in this cell is whatever I want it to be, sister. You thought I would actually step foot into this pit with you? No, I knew you would do something like that. It's exactly who you are. So I thought I would skip the physical theatrics and just invade your mind as a whole. It was easy enough for me so it would be a piece of cake for Remiel."

Okay, you made it kind of difficult for me but I did just return from the dead, she thought outside the door. Remiel is also an archangel and quite frankly, dear sister, you can just bite it.

"Damon would never-"

"It took some convincing, but when I let him know about Lucifer and Remiel descending upon us all and Remiel's wish to revoke our free will and make each of us bound by blood her slaves it seemed to persuade him. Do you remember in 1958 when you were finally reunited how you told Damon you had only given in and shut it off a few weeks prior? Why did you not confide to him that you did it after the fifth year without him on the day of your birth in which you never age again? Did you not want him to find out about your ruthless murders? Or was it just Lena and Daniel Vasile's deaths you didn't want getting out? Tell me the truth, sister, for you have no choice."

Damon listened upstairs for hours as Zina and Nova went back and forth blow for blow. Each time Nova killed her sister Zina reappeared for another round. Elena had left before Zina even invaded her sister's mind. Unable to listen to the fighting and Romanian cursing anymore, Damon meandered up the stairs. Absentmindedly he found a pack of unopened cigarettes in one of Nova's drawers. He thumbed over the brand before slapping it against his palm several times and cracking it open. He sat in their window nook with a bottle of bourbon and the cigarettes, smoking and drinking until the sun had gone down and came up again. He had managed to tune out the slightly quieter battle when his phone rang with Elena's name on the screen.

"Any progress using Zina's methods?" She asked quietly.

"Not from what I've heard," he replied blandly as he took a long drag on his fourteenth cigarette.

"Are you… are you smoking right now?"

"And all night. Nova's always stocked up and hid cigarette packs since she became a smoker. So I've just about finished off this bottle and pack."

"Damon, do you… do you think there will come a point where you will just give up? Where you'll see that you won't ever get the Nova you knew back…?"

Damon was quiet as he smushed the cigarette butt into the ashtray. "Are you asking because you think Nova can't be saved or because Stefan took off without a word and you're partially blaming Nova for it?"

"Why would you think I blame Nova?"

"Who doesn't blame Nova for everything that's happened?" His voice was stressed and strained. "The second she came back into town for me and stayed changed everything. Everything has always been because of Nova."

"Damon…" She just about whimpered with guilt. She gave a sigh and then the line fell quiet while he lit up another cigarette and stared out the window. "Why didn't you ever mention Nova when you came to Mystic Falls?"

"Seriously, Elena? She ran in the 90s when she found out I was still tracking Katherine and how to break her out of the tomb she wasn't even in. She broke my heart when she did that and I knew exactly why. So yes, I came to Mystic Falls in search of Katherine because it was my only hope after Nova left. When I realized Katherine duped me I knew I fucked up even worse. I wasn't going to mention someone who's life I ruined when I had bigger plots here. I never expected her to come back to me."

And I'm not so sure she will this time… He thought mournfully.

"She came back because she loves you, Damon. And she always had. She left because she was hurt, yes, but she realized that she couldn't keep going without you. And after what Zina told us, neither of you can live without the other. She'll keep coming back to you, Damon."

"Is this supposed to be the part where I tell you some half ass comforting bullshit about Stefan just like that?"

Elena stiffened on the other end at his harsh words. True, she was hoping for some sort of solace, but she was sure she wasn't going to receive it. "No, actually. I should have just believed you when he left with Klaus the first time and became a Ripper again." She couldn't see but he had stopped puffing, causing the cigarette to burn, his eyes widened a little. "If I hadn't been so determined to save Stefan then, then Nova never would have gotten involved with Klaus. It wouldn't have started her spiral since returning to Mystic Falls. I should have told you to just leave with her and move on without Stefan."

Admittedly, Damon felt a pang of guilt. It wasn't necessary for Elena to blame herself, but he was wallowing and hurting badly enough where he was going to let her. Part of him even still blamed Stefan. If it weren't for him, and even Katherine, he could have lived a human life with Nova. They could have built their own estate, had children, and lived peacefully with one another. Truthfully, he never wanted Nova to turn. Even after he had he didn't want to darken the Romanian's innocence. On more than one occasion he contemplated either compelling her or just ending her life swiftly and peacefully. He feared if he compelled her and gave her a new life that he would seek her out again and ruin it all.

"Damon," came Zina's voice quietly in the doorway. He hung up and still refused to look at her. "Damon, I'd like if you came downstairs with me."

"Why?"

"Wouldn't you like to see Nova?"