06: It's About to Get Heavy.

Remiel spun Nova around so she was against the second door instead. Nova had slid into the corner of the doorframe as she felt something quake behind it. While Remiel choked her, her emerald eyes looked up for something in the wood. At first nothing had been there, but they both watched as four letters burned their way into the wood: Z.M.C.V. Both women knew immediately what those letters meant and had two completely opposite reactions to them.

"No!" Remiel shouted before grabbing Nova's head with her free hand.

Nova had already started to laugh. "You really underestimate that little brat, you know. To be honest, I think we all have." She winked and placed the bottom of her boot flat against the door as wings scorched beside the Z and V. Her head was throbbing and she finally realized the pull she felt was going to the very door she was against. That was when she heard them.

"Nova!"

For anyone else it would have been difficult to distinguish but her vampiric hearing could pick out Damon and Zarya calling to her. She reeled up her leg and kicked Remiel off of her with as much force as she could muster just as Zarya's door unlocked and opened behind her. She flipped the bird to the archangel on the ground before disappearing through the doorway. Remiel chased after her, but the door slammed shut and locked leaving Remiel to scream and shout in darkness.

The Romanian was thrust back into her body at a speed greater than even she had anticipated. The amethyst vanished entirely from her eyes and she jolted upright with massively wide emerald ones instead. She came close to smashing heads with Zarya, stopping merely inches from the human girl's face. Every other person in the room remained still, uncertain about what was about to happen. With her humanity still off Nova was unpredictable. Neither Vasile's expressions were readable. Dean reached slowly for his gun.

"You returned to pry me away from Remiel," Nova stated. Even her tone gave away no hint about her intent.

"None of us are gonna fall into her insane plots," Zarya replied confidently. "None of us."

The air was thick with tension and silence. "You had no reason to do that. Our goal of coming here was accomplished. You risked putting yourself right back in Remiel's path by coming back for me."

A smile tugged its way softly onto Zarya's lips. "I had plenty of reason. And we still gave the bitch the bird. You did give her the bird, right?"

As they watched the scene unfold between the two Vasiles, the six found themselves seeing Nova's expression actually change. At first it was just a couple of twitches, but Damon amongst the lot of them could see the way her face softened slowly. Her lips parted as if she were going to say something but closed instead. After what felt like the longest couple of minutes in existence Nova finally stood. Her gaze remained fixed on Zarya a moment before she extended her hand to the kneeling girl.

"Thanks, kid."

It was more than enough for the raven haired hunter. She resisted the urge to grin as largely as she wanted and took Nova's hand, allowing the vampire to help her to her feet. Oddly enough, something about little Zarya seemed to make something stir within Nova. Zarya reminded her of herself, if only she had enjoyed life a little more. No, Zarya was what her life was like when she first turned. Everything was brighter, louder, more eccentric. She danced with Damon beneath starlight, moonlight, and streetlight. She could practically feel the music, the lyrics she sang. How had something so amazing become so muddled and no longer enjoyable? Where had she lost hold on the best of life?

Nova basically tuned everything out from then on. She found herself lost in old thoughts. Once all of the mediating was done, Damon guided Nova toward the stairs and door. He could see easily that something was actually getting to her. Damon took one last look over the railing as Zarya entered the room. Gods forbid whatever those five were about to hash out. She met his eye before he walked out the door. Something in her smile wanted to tell him that Nova would be okay again, but yet he saw so much of Nova in the same smile. Her features were a bit softer than Nova's, but he imagined that was what Nova looked like when she was younger. Considerably, Zarya should have actually been older than Nova in human years, shouldn't she be? Yet she looked barely legal to consume as much alcohol as she did.

Zina was surprisingly quiet when they began their trek back down to Virginia. A couple of times Damon glanced back at her through the rearview mirror to see her staring mindlessly out the window. He opened his mouth to speak when Nova's voice cut him off.

"What was it like seeing your daughter for the first time?"

The question took both of them by surprise, but not quite as much as how docile her voice actually sounded. Zina would have normally told her to go fuck herself had Nova asked with malicious intent, but even the elder sister seemed to lament the thought of Katia Vasile. She would have been Nova's niece anyways. "I'm glad she's alive," Zina started off quietly with her gaze still out the window. "She's a tough little broscoi."

"How do you know Romanian so fluently?" came Nova's next surprising question. "If you were raised by that Bulgarian curva shouldn't she have taught you that tongue?"

"I knew who I was all my life," her sister answered simply. "Tată și mamă shipped me away with my family bracelet. Katerina adopted me when I was just about three I believe? Perhaps younger. I was still in a Romanian orphanage. My first words were Romanian. My last words will be Romanian."

"You mean the next time you die?" Damon teased with a smirk. "What were your final words the first time?"

She chuckled a little at the actual memory. "When Klaus found me, he gave me one more chance to surrender and marry him. I told him aș prefera să ard."

He looked over to Nova with a playful look on his face. "Romanian translate please?"

Nova's head turned so could meet his eye with an equally playful expression. Zina twitched a little hat neither of them were looking at the road. "I would rather burn," she laid her accent on thickly for effect.

[Flashback; May 8, 1860]

When Zina awoke with a start from the vivid dream, she knew there was no denying it. It had been so long since she had a vision, especially since she turned. There was no time to waste. She rushed around carefully and quietly before Katherine even awoke to get her a ticket out of the country. By time she arrived back at their cottage home Katherine had woken up and Zina explained what she could as quickly as she could. Katherine hadn't wanted to believe her at first but she had known Klaus much longer. He was indeed coming for them at last.

"He is never going to stop," Zina told the brunette as she handed her the papers acquired that morning. "But I can buy you a head start."

"What are you talking about?" Katherine snapped when she realized everything was solely in her own name. "Zina, enough. We have to go."

"Yes," she smiled solemnly, "you do. Niklaus is almost here as is, Katerina. If we both flee again he will find us too quickly. You are getting out of the country and going straight to America. It should be more difficult for him to find you by then, especially when you start people your name is Katherine Pierce."

"Zina this is madness! I did not raise you from being a whiny, human brat to become a martyr. That is not what I taught you. You and I, we-"

"Survive, I know. And you are just going to have to trust that I am going to. I do have a few tricks up my sleeve, Katerina."

It took about as much arguing as she thought it would, but finally Katerina was on her way to becoming Katherine and getting Klaus off her tail for a while. Zina took out a long since hidden away gown she had made when she saw it in the quickest vision before she turned. Her slender fingers ran over the mystical stone in the center of the broach and its stars and colors opened up to her. Sliding on the gown and her ruby bracelet she stepped into the center of the home to wait for Klaus.

The house wasn't safe from vampires as technically nobody owned it. In the short time it took for Klaus to arrive, he walked right in to be met with Zina in her white dress. "You knew I was coming," he smiled coyly at her. "Is this your surrender at last, luv?"

"Not today, and not ever, Niklaus," Zina swore defiantly against him.

He took a couple of threatening steps closer to her. "I really am trying to give you a chance to live, Zina. I know you have been partnered with Katerina Petrova. Come with me and I can make all of your pesky problems disappear."

"You will never find Katerina Petrova." Zina smirked up at him. "And one day, Niklaus, I will find both of you again. But so help me by whatever Gods might exist, I will never marry you or anyone. Aș prefera să ard."

Having finally heard enough from the little Vasile, Klaus harshly rammed his hand through her chest. What he hadn't seen, however, had been the celestial, magic symbol that appeared on the stone just before he made contact. Zina heard her bones shattering the same vivid way she had in the vision. Blood poured down her lips that still curved into a smile. She shoved herself off of Klaus, dropping to the floor with her heart and the broach in his hand. He looked down to the object on top of her heart and watched as the organ began to turn black. After a minute it crumbled into small chunks of ice to the floor, leaving just the bloody broach in his hand.

[Present]

Zina had been staring out the window reliving the memory when something awful crept up her spine hastily. Saskia's face flashed before her eyes. When she looked ahead she noticed something in the darkness that Damon and Nova hadn't; there was a person in the road. She opened her mouth to yell but a wall of fire jolted up from the road itself. Damon quickly spun and skid away from the fire just for more to appear and send the car flying driver's side into a tree. Before any of the three vampires could react magic kept them painfully in place.

The exposed passenger door was yanked open and Nova forcefully dragged out. With a flick of the wrist the three vampires' necks snapped, rendering them all unconscious. Nova was quickly hauled off, and Riel Cressida fell to the ground beside the car. It took a couple of hours before Damon started to come to as his phone rang. "Matt found Katherine," Jeremy told him. "Where the hell are you guys?"

He groaned as everything slowly stopped spinning and looked around. "We got ambushed. They got Nova."

"Dammit! Did you see who it was? Katherine was mid-cat-fight with some lady who maced her. We think Silas might have mind-controlled himself some new friends out here."

"It's Auriel," came Zina's voice from the back. He hadn't even realized that she had awoken too. She dragged herself to the other side of the car and opened the door where the Moore witch still laid on her side. "They must have compelled her."

Damon groaned and tried to turn the car back on. After a few attempts the Camaro finally roared to life. "If Silas wants her bad enough to sic the whole town on her, that means we want her more. I'm beginning to think it was Saskia to take Nova then since we've already picked a fight with her archangel mom. Stay out of sight. You were the last person who Silas saw her with."

"Uh, that's the thing though, Damon… I saw Stefan today."

"Stefan?"

"Yeah, only… when he touched me, I felt a chill where my tattoo was."

"What are you talking about?"

"Right before I died, Silas grabbed me and I felt the same thing."

"Silas is gone. Bonnie turned him into a big piece of rock, remember?"

"I'm a hunter. Our whole reason for existing is to kill him. I know what I'm feeling, Damon. That- that was Silas. Not Stefan."

Nova's eyes opened to see darkness. Everything hurt her from her head to her toes. There were shackles on her wrists and ankles anchoring her to the center of her dark pit. She reached around in the dark until she felt something that made her skin burn. Deadly Nightshade. She had been put into a pit or cave of sorts filled with Deadly Nightshade. She let out a groan. "More morbid aesthetic, sure, but I've already been through this bit before," she called out to anyone who might hear her. "Whatever you're hoping to do to me won't work this time."

"Sure it will," Saskia's rather tired sounding voice resonated through the dark. "Oh, I'll tell Remiel that you're dead. I'll tell her it was slow because it will be. But I will not be your executioner, Nova. You are nothing more than a bargaining chip for me."

"Lucky me," she retorted back mockingly. "Do I at least get to know your master plan since you've already got everything ready to go? I think I much preferred being the last Vasile in existence."

"Sorry darling but that is not something any of us will ever achieve. Where there is one Vasile there are five more. While your eyes shine violet, I fear you are more like Lucifer than you realize."

"And that's a bad thing how? My other option is apparently Remiel and so far I've gotten a much worse impression. Don't you think if she really gave a damn about you she would heal you? I can hear the weakness in your voice. You're outliving yourself. Is that what I'm your bargaining chip for? Another couple of centuries?"

Nova never received an answer. She hadn't heard the nephilim-turned-vampire even leave but Saskia never spoke again. Was it day or was it night? Nova almost preferred Damon's feeble attempts at getting her humanity back on. At least that had a passion behind it. Remiel wanted Nova dead-dead for a reason; more than just because she pissed off the youngest archangel. No, Remiel felt betrayed because Nova still sided with Zarya. With Lucifer. Considerably, Nova really sided with no one but herself. Siding with someone meant you gave them enough slack to be let in which meant feeling things. Whatever Saskia thought she was about to do to Nova she would be sorely let down. Nova Vasile just didn't care. She didn't care that she was chained in a pit of Deadly Nightshade. She didn't care about what was coming next. She didn't care if Damon or anyone came for her. Ever.

She just didn't care.

And even if she wanted to turn it back on, she could no longer find the switch to do so.

"It was mortifying," Elena told Damon over the phone as she walked across campus. He was nearing the driveway of the boarding house with Zina and a still unconscious Riel. "We just sat there in silence."

"Well, chances are if he knows about vampires then he knows about vervain." Damon told her.

"What a convenient time for this Maxfield fella to make a pronounced appearance…" Zina muttered as she stared out the passenger window.

"Whatever he knows, I'm going to get it out of him," Elena declared with determination.

"Have you tried violence?" the younger Vasile twin spoke loud enough to be heard in the conversation.

Damon rolled his eyes. "Don't be like the murder twins." He paused. "Did you at least threaten him?"

"Damon!" the brunette exclaimed on the other line. "You can't tell me not to be like them and then suggest basically the same thing."

He shrugged. "Trying to work on that reformed serial killer thing to set an example for Nova. Everyone around me is making it incredibly difficult."

Elena sighed. "I wish we could get ahold of Bonnie. Maybe she could at least try a locator spell or something. Do you really think it was Saskia to take her? Has Riel woken up yet?"

"Nope. Chances are if it was Saskia she compelled Riel to stay unconscious after her goal was completed. At least, that's what any vampire with brains and a master plan might do." The engine to the Camaro cut after he parked in the driveway.

A small groan came from the backseat suddenly. "Then consider her the oldest dumbass in history."

"I'll bring her in," Zina muttered.

Damon nodded and got out of the car. Elena gasped a little, still on the other line. "Stefan?"

"What?"

"Stefan's here!" He could hear the lightheartedness in her voice as the door opened slowly. "Right now!"

"Turn off your phone." Damon heard faintly in the background. His eyes widened. Jeremy was right.

"Elena, whoa! That is absolutely not Ste-"

He looked down when he heard a beep. Elena had ended the call. That was when he realized he wasn't alone in the boarding house like he thought he'd be. Looking up from his phone he was greeted by an exhausted looking Katherine. "It's been a long summer, Damon."

"Good news," came Zina's voice nearing the door as she helped Riel walk. "We're down a Bennett witch and Vasile but we've got a-"

The black eyed Vasile froze in the threshold with Riel's arm slung around her shoulders. She met Katherine's nearly as dark eyes immediately, unable to look away. If her daughter wasn't ready to accept her being alive again yet then at least she was able to see the woman who raised her and cared for her like a motherly sister. It was a strange feeling to see Katherine Pierce in the flesh again. She knew of what happened between Katherine, her sister, and the Salvatores, but she had still been learning her way around the Other Side then.

"Katerina," the name rolled off of her tongue with a thick Romanian accent.

The once elder vampire smiled a little, trying to make it look like a smirk. "Zina-Arete."

Slowly, Riel took back her arm and stood on her own. She was still lightheaded with a throbbing migraine but she got the feel of the room. Zina took a step forward, standing beside Damon, once Riel released her. "You're much more human than I left you."

"You look miserable," Damon added icily.

"Please, I'm Katherine Pierce." She smirked first with arrogance at Damon then with a hint of pride to Zina. "I'm a survivor."

"I know I had just been thrown around in my own car, but I'm pretty sure I heard that Matt Donovan caught your tired, human ass."

Just then the house phone rang. Katherine sped to it before Damon could and answered. "Salvatore residence. Hello, Principal Weber, this is Elena. Oh, dear. We'll find him." She hung up and shrugged. "So Jeremy's been expelled. Elena will be cool with that, right?"

Damon grit his teeth and bit back his rage to deal with the situations piling up on him. "When I get back here, you're gone."

"Wait!" She called as he turned back to the door. "There's someone chasing me."

He looked over his shoulder at her with an icy glare. "Then run. Run far away."

"Wait!" Zina called that time. He resisted the urge to just toss her into a wall or the stairwell. "I thought we wanted Katherine more because of Silas. Let me deal with her while you handle Jeremy."

He nearly burst out laughing. "You're kidding me, right? Trust the twin we never knew existed who wanted Nova dead and then magically comes back from the dead? Plot twist! She was even raised by said Katherine! Yeah, because that's totally going to happen. Not unless Riel here can spell you two in a six foot box around the couch."

Zina crossed her arms over her chest barely any differently than a petulant child. "She's human now, Damon. She's borderline harmless. Do you think she knows how to be a human anymore? Let alone in this day and age? It's barely easy being a vampire when you've been dead for over a century. She's been a vampire for basically six centuries."

"She unfortunately has a point," Katherine spoke up. "I barely even had to resemble humanity when I raised her. The times were so much easier then."

"You taught me how to compel people without compulsion. Please stop talking right now." The ravenette Romanian sweatdropped. "Look at her, Damon. Do you think those scrawny, human feet can handle those Louboutin shoes? Do you think she knows how to have a job so she can even pay for anything? She's not ready for humanity in the 21st century."

"God, fine!" He finally huffed from being tired of hearing the two speak. "You know what? I don't even care." He threw his hands up in defeat as he backed out the door. "Come up with some horrendous plot that fucks us all in the end. Go ahead because I cannot possibly give enough of a fuck about whatever you two can think up when I've got Silas, Saskia, and archangels bouncing us around like tennis balls. Now if you don't mind, I have to try and compel or talk Jeremy's situation down." He flipped them both the bird with his keyring on the finger as he slammed the door behind him.

"I mean," Riel finally broke the silence after a solid minute, "I can't really blame the guy. I thought screwing with the Mikaelsons and Lucifer was bad?" She shook her head. "This is a whole new level of crazy."

Zina shrugged. "Then I guess we need to come up with things even crazier."

"Crazier than the original immortals and archangels?" Katherine scoffed as she poured herself a glass of bourbon. "That's going to take a lot of effort. We'll have to think and move quickly, drugar." She smirked. (Comrade)

A/N: Thank you so much to the handful of new follows/faves I have gotten and an even bigger thank you to Vickie Dillard1 for being the first to leave a couple of reviews! I can at least guarantee you that one way or another Nova and Damon will see it through to the end together. Everyone else... well... -shrug-

I've got a new promo up on youtube! Search me there or find it on my facebook page!

xoxo
Kuraki-chan