Authors note- If you want a visual or how I envision Serena Bennett, think Jhene Aiko.
It all started the second Serena Bennett stepped into Mystic Falls.
"Are you sure about this?" Lucy had asked.
And back then Serena had been sure. So certain that she was making the right decision. Seems even now she is still making mistakes.
Serena smiled then, tightly and shook her head, short and dismissive. It wasn't fair to Lucy to be so curt with her- she's done nothing wrong. "I just," Serena closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I thought I would feel something more."
When she left it was early in the morning and Lucy was watching Serena with those sad eyes and the closer she got to Mystic Falls, the closer to hell she felt.
(She should have trusted her instincts).
The town of Mystic Falls, as of the last census has a population just over two-thousand people. It is a quiet, homely place- the kind of place where people who are born there rarely end up anywhere else, or they leave as soon as they have the means to.
Once she entered town limits it started.
The power flow directly into her. As if- as if she left a buried chest, deep in the earth, filled with power. And as soon as she came back the chest opened and the power left behind is flying into the core of her being.
(She should of recognized that power as a foreign entity. As not apart of herself, but it felt so familiar...so necessary that she allowed it.)
Just like she allowed herself to attend the funeral of Shelia Bennett.
She had sat in the back, hidden.
"Good afternoon. For those of you who don't know me I'm Bonnie Bennett, Shelia's grand-daughter," She had looked down at her notes then. "My Grams was a good person. She was loving, and attentive was and the best friend a person could have."
"Lies, lies, lies," Serena repeated over and over in her head.
"I was lucky to have her in my life," Bonnie continued. She spoke of her love of teaching (lie) and her generosity (lie) and the way she was always there for her family over the years (lie).
She felt nails in her arm. The only thing keeping her from losing her mind.
Next there is laughter, Bonnie must of told a joke, not that Serena heard it.
"And she loved a good Scotch," Bonnie laughed with watery eyes.
"That's the only thing she loved," Serena thought.
She could feel the room standing, now. But she wouldn't.
Serena could feel the sound of heavy breaths pushing her further and further away from the crowd. She decided it was as good a time as any to disappear. She would not be missed. Who misses the truth when the lies are so comforting?
So she turned away from Shelia, and her grief, and her sister.
Looking back, Serena would always regret that decision.
The evening is quiet, only the whisper of the wind through mostly bare tree branches breaking the silence that has settled since the sun began to wane. But for now, at least, it's only freezing cold, and quiet. Too quiet.
It is, Serena considers, positively eerie, which she supposes is fitting; both for her current locale and what she intends to do.
She crosses her arms over her chest, then uncrosses them long enough to rub her bare hands together for warmth and the stamp some heat back into her cold feet, before crossing them once more. Huffing under her breath, she curses the circumstances—that have brought her to stand in a cemetery, beside a freshly opened grave.
She sighs, checks her watch, and sighs again, louder this time. Glances to her left, to the casket that has not yet been lowered into the earth. "What happened, Grams?" She asks the corpse that lies within.
Her dead grandmother, unsurprisingly, doesn't answer.
Not yet, anyway.
Serena sighs again for good measure.
The cemetery's maintenance crew will come along to lower the casket into the vault, and cover it with dirt. But for now, the casket and the woman in it sit atop the grave, and with one last glance at her watch Serena opens the lid.
Inside, is her Grams, just as she remembers her.
Her hands are joined over her chest and a rosary is wound through her fingers. Her skin holds a waxy, unnatural pallor of the recently deceased after being worked over by a mortician. Nevertheless, the mortician did a good job, especially since it seems like Grams is just sleeping.
Beside her is her favorite pieces of jewlery and the records that Grams would play every morning.
"You won't like what I am about to do, Grams." Serena mutters quietly, mournfully.
She thinks about Bonnie, and as always, it hurts.
She lifts her hands ready to do what she has to do.
There is a rather simple term for what it is she can do, she knows; in fact, it can be summed up into a nice, neat little one-word package.
Necromancy.
She prefers not to say the word aloud, though, due to the connotations.
No matter how times have changed, there is still something inherently unwelcoming about necromancy.
She learned a long time ago that the less people who know, the safer she is. The more likely that she can go home each night to her own bed; a worn out, second-hand, and overall terribly uncomfortable mattress but her own all the same.
It doesn't take long.
Serena sinks further into herself, feeling the flutter of that power like fingertips drug lightly across the smooth surface of dark, still water. The resulting ripples feel at first like nothing more than the charge in the air just before lightening strikes, growing stronger and stronger still until the ripples feel more like waves, and then something more solid that he can wrap his mind's fingers around and pull to the surface. Then it's there, crackling beneath her skin and in her eyes. It's thrilling and terrifying, and the only time she ever feels like herself.
Then, she raises her hand, and ever so gently presses her palm to her Gram's cheek.
Serena's breath leaves her in a shaky hiss as the power she's called forth so quickly and suddenly leaves her, flowing into the corpse she touches.
Almost as if the breath itself has been repurposed, Grams sucks in air in a sharp, painful-sounding wheeze, opens her eyes, and promptly begins to scream.
"Grams," Serena says, dropping her hand to touch the dead woman's shoulder, which only serves to cause milky-white eyes to dart her way, and turn the screams in her direction.
"Grams," she tries again, shouting to be heard over the recently revived Shelia Bennett's wailing.
"Serena?" Grams mumbles her eyes glassy, dead.
"I need to know what happened, Grams?"
"You've been gone for so long-"
"I know," Serena mutters through the painful tightening of her chest, and the shooting pain down her arm. She's used to that, though; feeling whatever the corpse was feeling in the moment that they died, but knowing it's a phantom pain doesn't make it any easier to bear.
"Where is your baby?"
Serena swallows thickly. That question burns, and cuts, and drags through her. She feels tears burn her eyes but blinks them back, Shelia Bennett isn't getting her tears.
"Grams, you died and I need to know what happened-"
Grams shakes and shivers. "I'm dead?"
"I'm sorry but yes. I need to know what happened," Serena tries to keep her voice delicate, grieveable, but necromancy isn't extendable. It is merely reanimation, not another chance at life.
"Bonnie needed me to open tomb...I wasn't as strong as I once was."
"You did everything you could," Serena tries absently to soothe.
"My everything wasn't as good as it once was."
The young Bennett doesn't argue that point.
"My poor Bonnie, my sweet girl, she's probably in so much pain." And Serena could feel the ice and venom beneath those words. "She's always been the sweetest girl." Serena knew that translated to "Serena is terribly mean and cold." (It had for years.)
"Why did Bonnie need you to open the tomb, Grams?"
Her lips curve downwards, the milky white of her eyes darting to Serena's. "Those people she surrounds herself with. Elena Gilbert and her entanglement with the Salvatore brothers."
Serena's frown deepens. "Salvatore brothers? You mean Katherine Pierce's toys?"
"Katherine wasn't in the tomb." Gram's eyes jumped around. "Is Bonnie okay?"
Serena let's out a hysterical laugh. She doesn't mean to, but she let's go of Grams. Let's go of the tether that holds her in their current plane of existence, hardly hearing it as she falls back into her silk-lined resting place with a heavy thwump, once again as dead as she was when Serena arrived.
All of that power slams back into her, like a rubber band held taunt enough that it snaps, and although it tries to find its place back hidden under Serena's skin it does so clumsily, leaving her feeling too large for her body to contain.
She thinks of Bonnie, and then forces herself to not think of Bonnie.
Her feet stay planted in the grass and she can feel a tiny spark from the decaying remains below her.
God, this situation is so fucked.
She wanted to sleep, huddle into a ball and lose days.
Serena doesn't go to Bonnie first.
She needs to see if it's true, if Elena Gilbert really is Katherine's doppelganger. If everything her visions showed her would come to pass.
When she sees those dark eyes for the first time in full light her stomach drops.
She wants, more than anything to drag Bonnie, kicking and screaming, as far away from this stupid town as she can manage.
Instead she finds the lonely property with too much land, she technically is inheriting, although that is a complicated matter in itself.
She doesn't hesitate to apply as an art teacher at Mystic Falls High.
She's missed art, the thrill of creation, getting lost in her subject. She started painting when pregnant with Alias and hasn't been able to stop since then. She has however expanded her creative outlets into music and writing as well. (They all provide temporary relief, but none seem to ever fully express everything within.)
With her new book about teenage pregnancy and post-partum depression taking off and hitting the best-sellers list, her pen name keeping her identity locked down and more money sliding into her bank account, Serena doesn't need a "job." But selfishly, the idea of being near Bonnie takes precedence.
She is after all, more than qualified.
Bonnie feels Serena before she sees her. The raw power, circling like some beacon.
Bonnie doesn't react at first to seeing her sister. Doesn't feel anything. Until Serena tilts her head just so, like she's considering something very important.
She's caught momentarily by the way Serena moves, quiet, hardly more than a swish of fabric and the click of her heels.
And then there is anger.
So Bonnie sits, she stands.
She walks, she paces.
Up and down, up and down. She paces because her legs need to move. They need to walk for all the times they hadn't walked.
She felt her blood boil. The sand inside was burning hot and choking her, from everywhere, and then it alternated with freezing cold. Her mind going blank with swear words she was unwilling to release. She wanted to get blind drunk, and scream, and cry, and drown herself in the nonexistent sea.
Then Bonnie met Serena's eyes. And she knew that Serena could see everything. The transparency was annoying and brutal.
"Bonnie."
"I'm fine."
Or as fine as she could be on any given day.
Even if her magic is flaring out uncontrollably.
But Serena looks calm in front of the growing winds and static in the air, a half- smile curving her full lips.
"Walk with me," Serena says quietly.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," Bonnie snarls, echoing her inner thoughts, even as she paces back and forth in front of Gram's house. "If you want something from me, you're going to have to tell me now."
Serena huffs, her eyes cutting towards Bonnie. "I don't want anything- I just-"
"What? Want a piece of Grams' will?"
Her eyes darken in response, and the temperature seems to drop ten degrees. Serena looks deadly with anger, but soon enough her shoulders fall and all that anger curls right back inside of her.
"I don't care about that."
"Then what do you fucking care about, seeing as sticking around and not leaving me wasn't a big priority of yours."
Her mask slides firmly into place. "Enough." She growls out. "You are allowed to be angry, you are allowed to hate me, but you will let me speak. Am I understood, Bonnie."
Bonnie swallows feeling as if she just sucked a sour lemon, the winds start to pick up again but she manages to tramp down any physical reaction to the words.
"Yes."
Because damn it all to hell, she doesn't know this woman. This woman who stands tall (despite her short height), and dresses professionally. Bonnie doesn't know this woman who glides with every step instead of clumsily dancing around, she doesn't know this woman whose physical appearance had changed so drastically.
Bonnie doesn't know her sister at all. And it hurts in the worst way.
She almost wishes Serena just stayed away.
"Do you remember why I left?"
Bonnie scoffs," You got in a fight with dad and you ran away. Just like mom did."
Serena forces herself not to flinch. "A fight about what, Bonnie? What was your father so upset at me for?"
"Does that matter," Bonnie finally snaps, stomping her foot as her chest heaves erratically. She wants to punch this woman in the face, and claw at her skin until she finds her blood. "You left me to-"
Serena shakes her head, not willing to listen to this any longer in case she does something cruel. She has a tendency to lash out in the worst ways.
"I wasn't given a choice, Bonnie."
Bonnie freezes because she in no shape or form remembers that. She tries to meet Serena's eyes but Serena looks anywhere but her.
"They made me leave, and yeah I could have come back but I didn't because I wasn't in any place where I could come back and not destroy myself in the process."
"That's not true."
Serena holds Bonnie's eyes. There's nothing behind them, just a neutrality that makes Bonnie shiver.
"Believe what you will," she says after a long moment. "I didn't come back for your forgiveness."
That causes Bonnie to scowl. "Then why did you come back."
"Because Grams raised you and she is gone. Because your father didn't even bother to come back here for her funeral much less check on you. Because you're alone and I don't want that for you."
Serena doesn't carry her sins on her shoulders, but rather on the top of her chest where the pendant lies. She can feel it now, pressing into her neck, indenting its small, sententious shape into her skin.
The burn is overshadowed by the burn in her stomach. Right over the skin that once stretched and protected a young baby in it.
Serena rubs her hand over her stomach, feeling ashamed, and then hating herself for feeling that.
"I just miss her, you know?" Bonnie finally said with a broken expression.
No, Serena did not know. But still she nodded.
She likes her eyes.
It's one of the few things she's thankful to have and didn't have to change. It's the first thing she looks at whenever she's inspecting her face every morning. She has to remind herself to look at them when she's trying to hide the rest of her flaws.
Serena allows herself a genuine smile in the comfort of her bathroom. She doesn't think she's a beautiful person a lot of the time, but she affords herself this moment in the mornings.
And, well, that has to count for something.
Bonnie doesn't react well to seeing Serena as a teacher at Mystic Falls High, she's the youngest one on staff at the age of twenty-four, and everyone who remembers her looks like they have too many questions to ask so Serena avoids them.
Being back in Mystic Falls is hard.
She still has the scars from what is was like before Alias. They may not be visible, but they exist. Everytime she sees a cheerleader and remembers when she was one and everything was easy. Everytime she passes by her old locker, or the bathrooms she took her pregnancy test in.
And then there is Bonnie.
Bonnie is another reason she feels close to tears all the time.
But all she can do is allow the days to flow.
"Serena?" A voice calls out from the hallway, when she turns she sees Jenna. And for the first time in a while Serena smiles.
Jenna Sommers.
Somewhere between the dramas of high-school they became friends, even when at their lowest and most petty, they overcame. She is as pretty as Serena remembers, and Jenna holds no hesitation as she comes over and throws her arms around Serena.
"It's been so long," Serena replies wrapping her arms carefully around the other woman.
"It has," and Jenna's eyes are already filled with tears. She truly never expected to see the eldest Bennett daughter again, not after what happened. And the details threaten to overwhelm her in a way, because while Serena had always been pretty, now she is goddess like.
Everyone had thought Serena was ruined. Would never recover.
Barely her own person when sent away.
And here she is glowing with something ethereal.
Serena's hair is longer than it was in high school, no longer just barely touching past her collarbone, now it rest below her breasts in wild pretty curls. It makes her look younger, more relaxed. And although her height didn't change, her shape certainly did. Hips wide (although Jenna can't help but wonder If that particular feature was tied to child birth), curvy figure, and a dimpled smile.
The startling differences between her and Bonnie have taken hold as well. These days, Jenna can clearly see the two have different fathers.
"You look amazing!"
"Me?" Serena says with a warm laugh. "Have you looked in a mirror recently?"
Jenna shakes her head, the stress from taking care of Jeremy and Elena, the lack of sleep because of her thesis, all seem to melt away. "No time to unfortunately."
"Oh yeah, I heard about that, taking care of teenagers as much of a nightmare as it sounds."
"You bet," Jenna says warmly leaning her weight on Serena's desk.
And a familiar smirk crosses Serena's full lips. "Now that we are both old enough to drink and escape with the help of alcohol..." She throws her eyes over the room as if she's about to tell a secret and she doesn't want anyone to hear, "Mimosas?"
"Mimosas," Jenna immediately confirms.
Wednesday Mimosas become a thing.
And it's nice to feel normal.
Even if her sister regularly keeps things from her and everything feels so out of place inside.
She meets one of the big things her sister keeps from her the following Monday.
Bonnie is curled on the floor, power circling her, it's the spirits magic. Serena can tell the second she lays eyes on her.
The bones of Rudy Bennett's house groans at the combined weight of Serena and Bonnie, as if too full of power.
Falling to her knees before Bonnie, Serena brushes back her hair. It isn't necessarily loving, or intimate, (Bonnie wouldn't appreciate that) but it is like pulling back curtains to let the light in.
"Serena," Bonnie mumbles, slightly disoriented.
"I have magic too," Serena says more sharply then she intends. "You could have come to me." Why didn't you come to me?
"I don't know how long you will be here."
That causes Serena's eyes to shine. Not with happiness or pleasure, but they glitter with water nonetheless.
A knock breaks through the silence.
And then a bang.
And then a repeated beat against the wood of the door.
Taking in a deep breath before floating towards the door and opening it quickly. The sudden burst of ice that follows let's Serena know, almost immediately, who (what) she is dealing with.
"Who are you?" Damon bites out with hostility lining his tone, he immediately looks out over her shoulder, searching for Bonnie. As his eyes sometimes get stuck doing.
Elijah Mikaelson however is struck. Because those eyes.
They're such an unusual color. Elijah thinks maybe an earthy olive green and looks back. No that's not quite right. Nougat? Almost… but. She turns her head a fraction and the light catches the irises of her eyes. Firelight through whiskey. Molten honey in the late afternoon sunlight. This woman's eyes are the most fascinating, beautiful shade of gold.
Her hands are alarmingly still, careful, as she raising an unimpressed brow, "I should be the one asking questions."
There's a moment where silence reigns.
And then the oldest Bennett rolls her lovely eyes.
"That would be when you two introduce yourselves. It is only polite, after all."
"Only in the name of politeness," Elijah eases in, "I am Elijah Mikaelson."
Serena gives a quick nod, her eyes now vicious and deadly. Protectiveness makes her jaw tight and he thinks absently that's she's beautiful, with all her controlled fury.
She doesn't offer her name back, just moves her eyes over to Damon. Waiting.
"Damon Salvatore." The oldest Salvatore says shortly. "Now who are you?"
"Bonnie's sister," She replied calmly, but still giving herself no true identifier.
"Bonnie doesn't have a sister." Damon is quick to argue, "And you look Asian. Bonnie isn't Asian."
Another silence.
"Are you actually an idiot?" The girl who claimed herself as Bonnie's sister snaped back. "I'm Bonnie's half-sister. We have different dads stupid. And my father is Jae Kwŏn."
"Is that name supposed to mean something to me?" Damon snarled.
"White Americans," Serena mutters, "The lack of culture is really a never ending battle."
Elijah chuckled then. "The Kwŏn family is almost as renowned as the Bennett family when it comes to magic. Rumored to have once been wolves who asked for divine intervention after being hunted by humans, granted magic by nature itself, now are known to be the world's most powerful elementals."
Serena narrows her eyes at the man. He feels different than Damon. Darker. Colder. She fights back a shiver.
"Now that's out of the way," Serena svowls, "I want to know why the hell my little sister needs the power of a hundred dead witches."
And the answer that follows make Serena nearly throw up.
"You're telling me," Serena had said slowly, her tongue lined with blades, "That neither of you could find a witch that wasn't a seventeen year old girl to do this. That neither of you even trying to intervene when a virtual child is being primed to take on an original?"
They both stare at her, silent as death.
She doesn't hesitate slamming the door in their faces.