Previously: Stefan is vervained by Grayson Gilbert. Casey de-escalates the situation, heads to Richmond, and is then de-poisoned.
Chapter three: as the case may be
Gene balances his journal high on his bent knees as he records Stefan's impressions of the tea, his interest only put off by shifting uncomfortably on the hard cement. Stefan feels an itch to apologize for staying down here, but waiting through a detox, in a basement, is more familiar to him than entering the apothecary upstairs, the domain of witches who in his experience are distrustful if not outright disgusted by vampires.
The effects of the tea are subtle, as he's already burnt through what's in his system, but he feels less drained. As a consequence of his diet, he's always aware of his ebbing energy, how to conserve, how long he can stretch out his need before the thirst threatens his resolve. He doesn't think it's a placebo. He's never heard of, nor believed it was possible to neutralize vervain, to have any faith in it.
"I'm guessing this isn't the usual way to go about this?"
Gene's pen stops as his pulls down the journal. "This?" He gestures, spinning his pen to encircle the hotboxes and pointing at the cot where Casey was laid upon. "Uh, no. Hotboxes are usually for people who, you know, poison themselves. Want to get clean. Sometimes purify themselves before a ritual."
Poison themselves, that's one way to classify addiction.
"How does it work?" Some of it is similar to his own detoxes. Locking yourself away in an enclosed space, locks for a basement, a latch for the box. Until when? The physical dependence is sweated out? Or until the first hurdle of psychological dependence? Until you want to be clean more than you want the drugs? (Want humanity more than the blood.)
"The flushing solution does most of it. This just expedites it. Which I guess it's the best way if the curse tries to rebound."
Can it work for a vampire? Can his be expedited, instead of wasting years coming off human blood, rationing animal blood in the meanwhile to avoid desiccation.
Why would a vampire ask? For a vampire, drugs don't create the same high, or dependence. It burns too quickly. Admitting to an addiction, can only mean one thing, and it doesn't inspire ease in a human, or a witch.
He looks down at his hands, hanging between his knees. He can't ask. Nor does he want to think about his own (inevitable) relapses. "Is that unusual, for the curse to rebound?"
Gene pauses, tapping the pen against the edge of the page. "Yeah. I mean... usually when you curse someone it's one and done. If you're cursed, or you're helping someone, you try to unravel it. Poisoned? Find the right antidote." He shoots Stefan a look. "I guess because you were dosed with vervain she thought the curse had been in her system too long to trust vampire blood...or...maybe it takes longer for your blood to recover it's healing properties?" He looks down at his journal, pauses to scribble a note. "A curse that looks like poison, acts like poison, and can keep replicating every time you try to fix it? That's..." he twists his mouth, guilty in admiring it.
Stefan thinks about what Casey told Sheila, that the werewolf venom coating the blade would turn vampire blood into acid.
Werewolf venom.
He doesn't share that detail with Gene.
Casey is curled around her wounded hand on top of the covers, still flushed with fever. Gene recommended keeping an eye on her, so Stefan declined her offer of getting him his own room before she had even elaborated on where that room happened to be.
In a supernatural boarding house. A dichotomy to the Salvatore Boarding House. And what was the supernatural community beyond witches and vampires? What else is out there?
He's awake with his thoughts when someone knocks on the door hours later.
The woman on the other side is carrying an old Gladstone bag with both hands, her right shoulder dropped by the weight. She looks him up and down curiously, rolling her shoulder to push back straightened, ice blonde hair out of her face.
"I'm a friend," she announces, smiling with a tense mouth belaying her impatience. She jostles the bag to one hand, offering the other for a handshake. "Charlotte."
"Stefan," he returns, shifting so Casey's form is visible behind him. She shakes his hand once, perfunctory, and quickly dismissive. Stefan moves out of the way so she can enter.
"She either mentioned me or you're very trusting," she drawls as she passes.
He watches her approach the bed, dropping the bag heavily and carefully at the end. "I thought this was a magical sanctuary," he opens with to gauge her reaction.
"Which stops me from doing harm if I value my own life," she tosses over her head flatly.
He assumes she's baiting him to take his measure, see if she can offend him by being patronizing. He trusts that Casey trusts her, as she asked after her in the apothecary, so he only briefly raises his brows, to give her a reaction.
She narrows her eyes slightly before turning, not quite turning her back to him, but no longer keeping him directly in her sights as she pulls the armchair closer to the bed, sitting elegantly on the very edge as she looks down at Casey. She reaches out to brush a strand of dark red hair aside, to touch her forehead with the back of her fingertips. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"She was slashed with a dagger, to her hand." He thinks, by the angle, where the cut is deepest, that it's a defensive wound, but Casey didn't elaborate on how it happened.
She reaches out for hand, gently uncurling the fingers, staying away from the burns at her wrists.
The whole palm is pink in what looks like a rash. She lifts the other hand to see the same.
"The wound's healing," she sighs heavily, still pinched. "It's just inflammation from the hotbox."
He shifts his arms against his chest, hands curled around the opposite elbow, thumbs pressing into his skin. "So, you don't think the curse will rebound?"
She considers the wound seriously. "No. It's run it's course. I'll run a battery to see what all it did," she clenches her hands in her lap.
"What it did?" he repeats, hearing the implication that the recovery isn't so simple. He stops himself from offering his blood, not sure if it's even safe, with the werewolf venom.
She smiles, but it holds no amusement. "Don't let the size of the wound fool you." She doesn't elaborate. "How long was it until she got to the apothecary?"
He shakes his head. He's not sure when the confrontation happened before the bridge. "At least three hours."
He remembers her blue lips, the black tinge on her fingers, the desperate wheeze as she was laid out on Sheila's couch. Her skin lost all color, except for her veins seeming to swell, the infection strengthening in her hand. He could see the high toil it was taking for her to stay conscious as she starved for oxygen. How she drove so far to Richmond he didn't know, as he remembered waking up to see her hand pressing against her chest, like she was pushing against the pain, her eyes bloodshot.
Was breaking the curse and flushing out the poison enough to undo that kind of damage?
He lowers his chin. "She lost consciousness and needed a witch's help for a blood clearing spell."
She frowns deeply. "Why would it take her three hours to get here?"
"We were in Mystic Falls."
She reels back. "Mystic Falls? She told me to never cross the boundary of that place!" She whisper-shouts, turning slightly away from her friend as if to avoid disturbing her.
He was not expecting Mystic Falls to generate that kind of reaction.
"What did she say about it?" he asks, curious.
She shakes her head, looking between him and Casey with a dozen questions flickering across her face. "To stay away basically. Moths, flames."
Was that a reference to Katherine's doppelgänger? To the comet? He shakes his head. "Is she always prone to analogies?"
"Only when she's absolutely serious." Her lips purse as she turns back to the bed. "So whomever attacked her has something to do with Mystic Falls." She muses. "Where do you come in?"
"After. There was a car crash off of a bridge. We met after we both jumped in."
She frowns. "Was the attacker there?"
He shakes his head. "No."
"No," she repeats, turning to Casey as if she can get the answer as to why, from her. She turns back to Stefan. She holds her hands up. "Okay. Did she say anything about them? About the attack."
He hesitates. By Casey's demeanor she hadn't circumvented much, hadn't avoided anything directly.
But, she had also been in pain, and aware that there was a possibility she was going to die. Was she the type to confess more to a stranger, two strangers, than she would her friend?
Charlotte watches him. "Did it have something to do with wanting...information out of her?" She asks carefully.
He decides, without knowing if it's the right decision, to reply in the same code, to use Casey's own words. "More to prevent her intervening."
She stares blankly. "Intervening in what?" She stops, eyes narrowing. "The car crash?" She asks flatly.
He nods.
She reaches for her necklace, running the pendant back and forth on the chain. "Did she change anything?"
'Grayson was meant to die.' And didn't. "Yes."
She breathes deeply. "So, someone kidnapped her, took her to Mystic Falls where this event was supposed to happen, told her it was all to prevent her from intervening, mortally wounded her, and then when Casey escaped, she immediately went to do just that."
Is that how it happened? "You think they meant for her to intervene?"
She glances up at him, quick and distrustful. "She wouldn't have allowed you into her room unless she trusted you. Magical sanctuary or not," her blue, flinty eyes warn him if Casey is wrong. "She wouldn't have asked for your help."
"She didn't ask," he can't help but correct, not wanting her under any illusions as to how much Casey trusts him.
"Because you offered first?" she questions. She reads his answer in his face. "Then she allowed you to, which amounts to the same thing." She returns to the pendant at her neck, sliding back and forth. "You know about her being a former seer?"
He nods.
She narrows her eyes, thoughtfully. "The thing is, she would have had to be very, very careful, in the way she intervened."
"Why?" he wonders at the cautious, delicate way she words it, the way she lowers her voice. And why, Casey, if she intended to help, did she park out of sight of the bridge, and he suspects, wait for the car to hit it's point of no return.
"It's worse than oath-breaking," she cautions, deadly serious.
Oath-breaking. Did that mean something different, to witches, to former seers? To him it sounds archaic, something out of the classics. Were there rules here that he was completely ignorant, more than antiqued honor at stake when breaking oaths, or vows?
"Torment," she elaborates "beyond death."
He rubs at his eyes.
He's confused on what having visions mean. Being a seer. Risking intervening. Fighting fate?
Why tell him those things, about what's going to happen? Why advise Sheila to help her granddaughter be less self-sacrificing?
Because it wouldn't make a difference?
Cassandra's curse, to never be believed. Oedipus's fate, to fulfill his own monstrous prophecy.
No.
No. Someone who carries a mortal wound on their hand, who fights through the poison, did it because she knew there was a chance.
He doesn't want to live 1864 again. He doesn't want to go through that with Damon. He doesn't want Mystic Falls to experience it again.
"Did she tell you what changed?" her voice pierces his thoughts, the dread that's hooked into his gut.
He answers quietly. "She saved someone's life."
She observes him for an extended moment, as if waiting for him to add more. Who, possibly. Their importance.
"So, they knew what was going to happen. They knew that she had a vision about it. They brought her close to where it was going to happen. They tried to kill her, or made it look like they were trying, or were trying to mortally injury her so she did have enough time to intervene." She looks frustrated as she spins through possibilities.
"You think it was reverse psychology rather than she genuinely escaped?" He guesses. It sounds like a gamble, making sure it happened that way, and that Casey would react how they wanted. "Why didn't they intervene themselves, if that's what they wanted?"
"That's a good point," she begrudges, sounding unsure.
He bows his head slightly, wondering if she's actually right to be suspicious, if too much of this is orchestrated.
"Without being attacked," he wonders "would she have tried to intervene?"
She shakes her head mutely. "I don't think she would have ever stepped foot in Mystic Falls."
He rubs his mouth before asking his next question. "Could it be someone who wanted her to suffer torment after death?"
Her body goes still. He's unconsciously supported her fears. It makes everything else fit. It doesn't matter if they meant for her to fail or succeed in intervening, if that's what they were after. She fists her hands, to stop from reaching out to Casey and waking her up, making her confirm it. "Did she share anything specifically about the attacker, or attackers?" Who was it, she wants to know.
He shakes his head. Most of what he knows he's inferred, her defense wounds, disheveled appearance, the abrasions at her wrists. Her indifference of the car, before she told the woman at the desk to take it. "She had their car, a silver Mercedes C-class, fairly new."
"Where is it?"
"It was parked at the apothecary, but she handed the keys to the woman at the counter here. Said she only wanted the contents."
"Hope that hurts, if she left them alive," she answers blithely.
He glances at Casey's form, chest rising steady and deep, wonders if she did kill them.
Charlotte snorts. "You seem disappointed," she observes, reading him and whatever he feels about her friend, with interest.
He looks over at her, steady and without expression.
She files it away. "The witch you went to in Mystic Falls, why couldn't she flush out the poison?"
"She said she didn't have the ingredients."
Charlotte raises her brow. "Did you believe her?"
He quirks his brow in return, surmising she's a woman who trusts very little. "Yes."
She frowns, dropping her pendant again. "Did she seem at all reluctant about coming to the apothecary?"
"...No."
He wonders if she suspects someone specifically, someone attached to the apothecary. Someone who at least knows about the visions. And in Casey's words, 'it might be hard to believe, but I don't usually tell people about the vision thing.'
Putting aside torment after death and however a doppelgänger relates to all this - he wonders if whoever it was intended for her to live, or to die.
He heads downstairs when Charlotte shakes Casey awake, advises her that they should break the fever, and carry her into the bath to treat the spreading inflammation. He doesn't know what goes into caring for someone who went through what she went through, the poisoning and the treatment, but she's hardly been asleep for a few hours, not nearly enough to recharge, to find reprieve.
(Is it because she doesn't want to wait for answers?)
Casey awakens without moving, without confusion, without grumbling. It tells him how used she is to being disturbed, her adaption. That some part of her stays aware, even when deeply asleep. When she gets up, already resigned, nodding to Charlotte's direction, he decides to leave.
He takes to exploring the strange eclectic house. He assumes it was built in the Queen Anne era; and the wallpaper left from the time it was built. The floors are rickety and could use sanding and new varnish. The artwork is incredibly varied in mediums, styles, size, and taste, and he wonders if Casey was comparing the artwork of the Salvatore Boarding House to this place.
He's drawn to the only room with the blinds open to natural light.
There's another occupant tucked into a cushion chair by the window, reading. He trails through the built-in bookcases until he stops in front of the shelves of crammed notebooks and leather-bound journals, running his hand across the leather, some of it cracked, or supple, or hard. He flips through a few, finds handwritten accounts in handwriting he rarely sees anymore. Others hold instructions to ingredient harvesting, crafting, gardening, ritual preparation. He moves towards another shelf, half full of what looks like new additions, most of the covers glossy paperbacks. Some are classics in his own library, none seemingly supernatural.
The mousy brown haired woman who watches him from the corner of her eye speaks up tentatively. "It's somewhat of a tradition, for lodgers to leave a book behind."
He scratches at the back of his head, looking over the books. "Is there an organization system?"
She chuckles, burying it in embarrassment as she peeks up through her lashes. "I'm not sure if there ever was one. They all get shuffled out of order."
Loosely chronological then.
He looks back at the paperbacks.
"I think that's my favorite section. It tells you about the different beings who've been here, what kind of people pass through."
He thanks her and finds himself drawn to the last book. A short, shiny copy of 'All's Well that End's Well'. Shakespeare. Not one of the popular plays. There isn't a foreword, or signature, or note buried between the pages, but he comes across a highlighted passage:
"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues."
He thinks he knows who highlighted this passage, who selected this book.
He finds a seat and starts it at the beginning.
A bell sounds, likely from magic as it vibrates softly through the room, from somewhere farther away.
He doesn't know what it signifies, and the other occupant in the small library doesn't look up from her book.
The girl who steps into the library half an hour later looks almost wholly different from the girl he met – who was pained and determined, barefoot and bedraggled in a watertight yellow sundress.
Her hair is untangled and smooth, pulled back into a braid that spirals over her shoulder, the ends curled at the waist. She looks more comfortable, arms swinging slightly at her sides, no longer wrapped around her waist. There's a healthy flush to her cheeks, brightened from the chalky white, and calmed from breaking her fever. There are patches of drying, pink lotion on her cheeks, the edging of her jaw, and down the sides of her neck. The more he looks for it, he notices it's also smeared liberally on her elbows and up her arms.
She stuffs white gloved hands in her belted khaki shorts, and rocks on her sneakered feet when she reaches him. "Hi," she smiles, looking only slightly tired. She bites the corner of her lip as her eyes drift to the book in his hands. She aims for dry, but her tone betrays her humor. "You wouldn't rather read about dragons?"
He softly closes the book, still not sure what he's gleamed from it. "The library's organized chronologically apparently. I couldn't decide when's the most likely time a dragon came to Richmond."
She laughs softly, plopping into the seat across from him. "Okay...How about an arachnid?"
"Arachnid," he repeats, without inflection.
Her braid shifts as she leans forward, her face lit from the window behind him as the red lightens, hints at strands of gold. "Spinnetod actually," her light grey eyes lock meaningfully, flicker just for a second behind him in empathize. "I don't think she's hunting now, but if she's using this place, it's probably coming up and she's scouting."
Again, he tries to read her expression, werewolves, dragons, and now another species, unique in that he's never heard it before. She's perfected a - he wouldn't call it guileless, because there's too much teasing in it, but a tone, a look of 'I dare you not to believe me'.
He tilts his chin, shaking his head slightly as he's drawn in again. He's willing to admit there's a lot he doesn't know, and it stops him from dismissing...all of this, even if he holds out from truly accepting it all.
"And what does a Spinnetod hunt?" he asks drolly.
She drags out the word slowly, conspiratorially. "Men."
He rubs at his eyes. "I need a drink."
"Vampires are non-compatible," she reassures, still in an undertone.
"That's reliving," he still doesn't drop his hand.
"If you knew how they hunted, you wouldn't doubt it." She slaps her hands softly against her thighs. "Speaking of which...hungry?"
She points out a copy of Charlotte's Web when he puts her book back, but he dismisses it as conjecture. She shoots back he shouldn't bother leaving a copy of Dracula, as there's at least fifty in the library.
He assures her it never crossed his mind.
And truly, he'd likely leave something more inline with her choice, not a hint at species.
"Like what, Gatsby?" she wonders, distracted as they head down the stairs.
He stops briefly in surprise. "What makes you say that?"
She looks back over her shoulder, evaluating him thoughtfully. "What's that quote? 'We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.'"
He doesn't have an answer. Once, those words spoke to something deep inside of him, always reflecting on his past, his youth, a time before he made irrevocable mistakes. Now, with what she's shared with him – he's not sure.
"I was thinking Alice in Wonderland," he says instead, instead of touching on her guessing at his favorite author, and a novel he's never understood his yearning for.
"Ah," she makes a noise of deep agreement. "I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours."
"I'm not surprised you empathize with the Cheshire Cat," he teases, thinking to himself: 'it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.' Even if he is fighting the current that's trying to bring him back to the past.
They step into the kitchen basement. It's a blend of Victorian and mid-century. A pale blue fridge with a click handle. A gas stove. Brick oven. Blackened stoned fireplace with cast iron rotisserie. There's a long line of jars on the counters, spices, and cultivated herbs. In that it's not unlike the apothecary it's attached to.
Casey heads to the island's assembly line, to a spread of Ruben pastrami sandwiches, coleslaw, garlic mushrooms, and a tin of chocolate cupcakes with white webbing icing. Casey points at the loaf of rye bread and then herself, the mushrooms, then him, and then gives a pointed look when she reaches the cupcakes.
He raises his brows, not sure what exactly she's trying to communicate as he makes a cup of coffee from the coffee cart. He doesn't need, or crave, hearty meals, though vampires do crave delicacy's, caffeine, and above all else, alcohol. (Not above all else.)
The cook at the stove is built like a fighter, tall and solid, with strong arms, and strong hands. The flour on his half apron, and smell of fresh rye bread pins him as a baker as much as a cook. He's seems busy grilling sandwiches, the cutting board out with a knife balanced precariously, leeks and parsley chopped fine on the board.
"Charlotte wants you to stick to the stew," he turns around to point at Casey, taking the lid off a stew pot left simmering, ladling into a bowl.
Casey looks at the sandwiches wistfully. "Yeah probably," she agrees. "Are you eating?" she turns towards Stefan.
He shakes his head. "I'm fine with coffee."
"Do you want any of the frou frou?" she gestures to the cream and sugar near her as she grabs a bottle of water.
"You don't know?" he asks with dry surprise.
She slides the cream and sugar back to its original spot, as if retracting the offer. "There's only so much knowledge I can keep track of."
He holds up his cup to illustrate he'll drink it black.
The cook hands her a steaming bowl filled with barley, carrots, and chicken broth. He raises a bushy brow at her. "Any reasons you're on diet restriction?"
She looks up from the taking the measure of ingredients in the bowl. "I was sick yesterday," she shrugs as she grabs napkins and a spoon, tucking her water bottle into her elbow as she picks up the bowl with both gloved hands. "Gab this is Stefan, Stefan, Gab."
They share a nod.
"That last one for you?" Casey gestures her chin towards the stove.
He shakes his head. "Got a few more."
"We'll be out there, if you want to join us?" she offers, nodding Stefan towards the wood pallet saloon doors.
They move into the dining room, that might have once been a cellar. The walls are limed over brick, and the ceiling is at a low 7 feet. There are scones above every table, carved in the same walnut wood. Some of the tables are small, only room for two people, others four, pushing six. It's less communal than he expected, given the dining room at the Salvatore Boarding House. The guests are spread out, an older gentleman sitting with his back against the far wall, fixated on his stew. A guy probably in his late teens is eating his sandwich quickly, headphones in his ears, and head turned away from the room. The man and woman sitting together, cradling cups of coffee, are the only ones to shoot them evaluating glances, quick and non-direct, something habitual, and long coordinated.
When the doors swing shut the room darkens slighter without the brighter light from the kitchen.
Casey chooses her table near the couple, her mouth curled in amusement.
He asks her about Charlotte.
"She's at the apothecary," she shrugs.
He tries to guess if Charlotte mentioned her theory, her worries. In this he finds her hard to read.
She folds her napkin in her lap, scoots her chair forward on the cobblestone, and blows gently on her soup.
The couple renew their conversation after neither Stefan nor Casey give them any notice.
The brunette, British, talks about visiting a friend named Slater, perhaps staying with him for a few weeks until they decide whether or not they'll stay.
The man, who's accent is harder to pinpoint, but something European, teases her love of windows.
"So, did you figure it out?" Casey looks up from spinning figure-eights with her spoon, as steam rises from the bowl. She nods towards the kitchen.
"Ruben sandwiches, mushrooms, and cupcakes?" He guesses.
She nods, widening her eyes as if he can read the secret in them.
He thinks he understands part of it. The cupcakes with the spiderweb design. He capitulates.
"Sandwitches," she drags out, then waves her hand. "Granted, the rye bread is a little more obscure."
"You're going to try and convince me there's a conspiracy in the lunch menu?"
She opens her mouth, stops, and then shakes her head, her wrist temporarily halted. "You draw the line at puns?"
"I think I drew the line at dragons," he returns her look, exasperated and humored at the same time.
"You know what? I'm going to introduce you to a Dämonfeuer," she quickly decides, leaning closer. "Look at the evidence, rye bread -"
"Which I'm guessing references rye ergot, in this fantasy."
She smiles, head tilted curiously. "You do know some Salem history."
"And what are mushrooms?" He raises his brow, mockingly pointing at himself.
She pulls in a breath in preparation, savoring it, before, "garlic. Garlic mushrooms."
He shuts his eyes and laughs.
"Okay," he holds out his palms. "What does chicken soup represent?"
At that, she falters, plopping back into her seat. "Uh, melting pot? Like, mixed heritage?"
"So, this is a theory," he nods drolly.
"So is Pythagoras, Pythagorean, whatever," she mutters, returning to her soup.
Gab comes out to join them with his own platter of Ruben and coleslaw, and a second plate of cupcakes. Casey pulls further in, to make sure he has plenty of room to slide next to her.
Stefan gets up to refill his cup, and when he comes back Casey is asking him if Sofia has taught him the secret to her mulled wine.
He shakes his head as he digs in. "She's old school. Recipes should stay in the family, and brews are women's craft."
"How close have you come to recreating it?" She asks, fully interested.
He smiles wryly. "She'd never admit it if I got it right."
"So?" she rolls her eyes. "Experimenting will only lead to you developing a better palette, and you might discover it for yourself or develop something unique. Win, win."
He begrudgingly looks encouraged.
"How's school, anyway?"
He talks about the different desserts they're working on. Both make a face at peach cobbler made the wrong way, as if it were a bread pudding. Stefan is now certain Casey was raised in the South, even if her accent is seemingly purposefully obscure, musical, but hard to pinpoint. Regional accents aren't as easy to guess as they used to be. Stefan has spent so many decades away from home, away from the accents he remembers, his Southern drawl is completely gone.
Gab elaborates why he's staying at the Boarding House, the supply of cookbooks gathered here, the lost recipes. The woman upstairs, who might be a man hunting Spinnetod, said the books came from things people purposefully left behind. He's not sure why people would leave behind their family history.
"No one else to leave it to. Family dies out, new generation isn't interested, which –" he shakes his head gruffly. "I don't get. But they leave it behind because they can't bear to keep it, or they're hoping someone will come along and appreciate them, use it instead of letting it die out. Too many things are lost because people wanted to keep them to themselves." He smiles. "And I'm grateful. Orphans like us," he softly elbows Casey, who's expression flickers, something brittle flashing across her eyes as she pulls in a breath and doesn't release it "we'd be cut off, but instead we can rediscover something that we can make our own."
Casey bobs her head, eyes on her soup.
She isn't a witch anymore - what ever she's been able to make her own, there are large parts of it at least, that she's lost.
Stefan backtracks the conversation. Cuisine has changed a lot, he broaches, guessing at the recipes in those 200-year-old books, from cultural taste, to choice-cuts of meats, before trade allowed fruit and vegetables from incompatible seasons. He's familiar with some of the rigor of culinary studies, and they both hold the conversation while Casey silently finishes her soup.
"Where'd you learn?"
Florence. Rome. Paris. He doesn't mention the institutions, understanding that Gab is putting himself through culinary school.
"What's your specialty then?" Casey asks softly as she rejoins the conversation.
He teases that she might not know traditional Florence dishes. Bistecca Fiorentina. Pappadelle Sulla Lepre.
She bites her lip, lashes shielding her eyes as she looks down.
"Sha, I have to bust out the cherie to get that reaction," Gab guffaws.
She glares at him, snatching a cupcake from the plate and starts pulling off her glove with extreme focus.
"Are you Italian?" Gab asks him.
He looks away from Casey's blushing face, pulling back in his chair as he clears his throat. "My family came over from Florence. Are you from Louisiana?"
Gab's mirth drops, but he nods back. "Born in New Orleans. We left when I was a kid. Not much of an accent left," he shrugs, almost self-deprecatingly.
Casey looks up from where she's peeling the paper from her cupcake, glancing at Gab's expression thoughtfully.
"I was last there in '42," Stefan offers, wondering at the mood. "No place like it."
The man sitting at the next table over (who has been discretely listening to their conversation without facing them) turns in his chair, and disdainfully says, "Is that where you received your little ring, in service in New Or-leans?"
Stefan turns his head, eyes steady as he takes the measure of the man, who flicks his hair out of his eyes to glare haughtily, while the woman next to him shoots her companion a look of warning. He keeps the rest of his body relaxed, laying his hands flat, as the man – the other vampire – looks down at the ring and clenches his jaw.
Casey interjects, "I wouldn't say it's little," peering down at the ring in mock-confusion. Stefan doesn't look away from the man glaring at him.
"In service of?" Stefan asks him to clarify, all warmth leeched out of his voice, waiting. He's met very few vampires who had daylight rings, and the ones without who have met him, usually toe around asking how he got it, plead, threaten, or fight.
He smiles back, mocking. "To the vampire king running New Orleans."
Stefan waits a beat to glance at the man's empty hand, then back up. "Is that what you tried to do?"
He sneers. "Do you have any idea how much older I am than you?"
"No," Stefan answers, short and blunt as his female companion hisses "Trev, don't pick a fight here."
He's abstractedly aware of Casey as she pulls off a piece of her cupcake and plops it into her mouth. "Imagine that, fighting in a magical sanctuary. Never a dull moment with you, Stefan Salvatore."
The woman blinks, hand reaching out for her companion's forearm. "Stefan Salvatore? Lexi's friend?"
Her hand tightens. "Knock it off," she advises, before turning cat-like eyes to their table. "I'm a friend of Lexi's as well. She tried to match us in...'89 I believe? Said you were one of the good ones," the last words are more for the man next to her. "Forgive my friend here for being presumptuous."
Stefan can't help glancing at Casey, who looks up from her cupcake as if surprised to have his attention, as if she didn't drop his name deliberately. And he accepts, that Lexi, who's the oldest vampire he knows, probably knows her, and has tried to matchmake.
"So, you haven't worked for Marcel," Gab questions, before Stefan can ask how well she knows Lexi.
"No. I don't know who that is," he admits. "Or that there was a king in New Orleans."
Gab pulls on his goatee. "I don't think he was a king in those days. Not until he nearly eradicated the Rougarou 20 years ago. Then, he started subjugating witches."
Casey looks at Stefan, a sparkle in her eyes as she mouths werewolves.
He makes a face back, shaking his head at her.
He sobers as he looks back to Gab, fits that into what he's already said. Mid-twenties, left New Orleans as a child, cut off from his family history, an orphan.
"And he gives daylight rings to vampires in his...employ?" he asks, playing catch-up.
"To the ones who've been with him long enough or are particularly apt enforcers," Gab declares, with a wealth of complex feeling underlining his words.
"A bit like Scar and the hyenas," Casey murmurs, mulling over her own words as she sits back in her chair.
"Are the Mikaelsons Mufasa?" Gab rolls his eyes, shifting his chair, if for nothing else than to expel pent up energy.
There's a visible reaction from the vampires Stefan is still aware of in his peripheral. They both still.
"If Mufasa didn't really die," Casey agrees, still picking pieces off her cupcake.
Who are the Mikaelsons?
Gab asks how Stefan earned his daylight ring.
"I didn't." He answers shortly. "There was a witch who knew the spell when I was turned."
The male vampire must find that answer intolerable. He pushes his chair in and tells his companion he'll be in his room. There's an almost halted gesture to incline not just his head but his upper back in a bow. It's an old social norm given his appearance. Unless he's spent decades desiccated somewhere or kept himself separate from human society.
"From what I've heard, you have to be connected to Originals in some fashion, given the original spell is guarded jealously," Gab cracks his knuckles, looking down at his own calloused hands. "Ever have to fight for it?"
"Yes." And he's learned that the spell on the ring is also individualized to the vampire. It can't be used, successfully, by another.
He nods, but his good humor is gone, lost in talk of New Orleans. He picks up his plate and tells Casey he'll catch up with her later.
Gab offers his hand to Stefan, grim, but friendly. Between Gene, Charlotte, and Gab, he's never had so many witches, or warlocks, at a time, willing to reserve judgment. And Gab has reason not to.
Casey picks up the two remaining cupcakes, places one in front of her and the other sliding towards Stefan.
"I apologize, again." The woman interjects with a sigh, ruffling the spiky brown hair away from her cheek. She places her hands on the coffee cups but doesn't rise. He wonders, with it being daylight, how limited she is on where she can go, and how she might not want to join her companion in his current mood. The other two diners have already left, and it's only the three of them that remain.
"I thought you were fine," Casey voices, with a telling look that she thinks the other woman doesn't have anything to apologize for. Stefan sighs, and reaches for the chocolate cupcake.
"Yes, well, I'd still feel dreadfully uncomfortable if I didn't," she jokes, fidgeting with a sugar packet.
"Then apology accepted," though he agrees with Casey. Even though he's not sure what's motivating her to stay and if it's isn't serving something ulterior.
She introduces herself as Rose.
Casey observes her a moment without reciprocating, instead offering her untouched cupcake.
"Bless be the peacemaker?" she waves, and when Rose smiles, surprised at the gesture, she stretches out to pass it to her. Casey uses the camaraderie to ask why it didn't work out, with Lexi's matchmaking.
Rose and him glance at each other, evaluating each other for a blind date that never happened. She smirks sardonically, aim more towards herself. "I've always been more attracted to the men I shouldn't. Don't know why. When Lexi said he was a good guy -" she shrugs, as if that was the death keel.
Stefan lifts his brow slightly, still eating his cupcake.
"It's pretty common," Casey declares, unscrewing her water bottle. "The tame the beast archetype. Appeal of aggression. Ideally that aggression turns on those who threaten you once you've romanced the beast, brought out that part that is 'only soft for you'. Proven fidelity. A protector."
Stefan furrows his brows, watching Casey's expression.
"Protector, huh? That's what I'm attracted to? Not the abrasive jackass?" Rose ruefully picks at her own cupcake.
Casey smiles sideways. "It seems counterintuitive, but instinct says the more aggressive, the better the protector. If you feel really unsafe, you'd probably go for the biggest jackass you could find." There's something teasing in that last statement, something knowing as she looks at Rose.
Rose glances away. "I take it you don't agree with this tame the beast archetype?"
Stefan waits upon her answer. Multiple times last night she had relied on his help, when she was hurt, when she felt unsafe. What drove that trust, or was it coincidence of him having been the one that was there? And sharing everything else, circumstance again? Or was it worse, what she saw in him?
Casey doesn't answer the question directly. "You're close with your friend," she states as fact.
"Yes," Rose agrees, questioning where this is going, but meaning it.
"So...let's say you found this beast. You fell in love. Your friend needs help, something serious, but something stops you from being there. This man, whose only soft for you, only prioritizes you, can you trust him to be there for him? For the people you care about? What if he feels he's choosing between caring for you, and helping your loved ones? Can you trust him to respect your feelings outside of him? Your choices?"
Rose doesn't answer.
Casey seems to shrug, lifting her drink for a sip. "Personally," she pauses, looking down at her water "I think you should have taken Lexi up on her offer."
Face Claims: Charlotte – Claire Coffee. Adalind from Grimm.
Gab – Howard Charles. Porthos from The Musketeers.
Spinnetod and Dämonfeuer is from Grimm. Rougarou is the myth of the Cajun werewolf.
Stefan pronouncing Italian is inspired by the way he says mozzarella in Friday Night Bites and how he talks about making Italian dishes from scratch. Yum.
Rose's defense of Damon to Jeremy bugged me, so I'm criticizing a little.
next: come what may
Casey leaves Richmond behind