A.N.: Hi everyone, thank you so much for all your reviews – in just hours of uploading this story, it really is humbling to me that you all – actually quite ravenously – went for my new story! So thank you to everyone who has already reviewed, this chapter is for you.
Dangerous Beauty
02
Transition
Pushing her tears away, Caroline finally asleep, Giulia bundled Firenze into her lap, a purring ball warm against her stomach, scratching him behind his ears, and fiddled with her phone. With the blistering sunshine and Sheriff Forbes' crazy work schedule, she had consented, after a suggestion from Damon, that Caroline could stay at the Boarding House, Giulia and Damon could look out for Car and make sure she was getting enough rest.
Giulia had brought Firenze, Caroline her Gilmore Girls DVDs, but the provisions Giulia had promised for their marathon had altered. Sure, they ordered pizza, takeout, ate too many Sno-Balls and Pop-Tarts, Giulia got sick after too many fries, one too many helpings of spaghetti and meatballs, brioche burgers and blueberry pancakes (watching Gilmore Girls they were sticking to a strict Lorelai-approved diet), and lethargic after forgoing the gym or running out in the woods to the quarry to keep watching episode after episode of the most glorious mom on TV: her love for Lorelai was boundless, they should be in the same support-group for coffee addiction, and Emily and Richard's passive-aggressiveness was worthy of awards. Jelly Belly beans, chocolates from Caroline's stint in the hospital, Sno-Balls, Mallomars and pies, Giulia couldn't look at another sweet for months. But… Damon had also introduced Caroline to the chest-freezer full of blood-bags pilfered from hospitals, clinics and blood-banks in a hundred-mile radius.
Everyone was still in a mild state of shock about Caroline. But more over Giulia's reaction to her transformation – she had never blown up like that, and hitting someone was not something Giulia believed in: she took MMA and boxing classes so she could defend herself, but she remembered once being slapped by Elena in the eighth grade, and had never forgiven her for it. She had even told Miranda, who had grounded Elena for a week and tried to impress on her that it was never okay to hit someone – that it was vicious and humiliating. And yet when she had seen Bonnie torturing Damon, felt the heat of the flames, seen the blood smeared on Caroline's face…she had snapped.
She hadn't heard anything from Bonnie, but through Stefan's Deeply Disapproving expression Giulia knew Elena had to be hard-core pouting. And she couldn't give a flying fuck.
After emotionally flaying them at the hospital the night Caroline was admitted, Giulia had hoped Bonnie and Elena might have taken something from it. Perhaps dwelled more on their actions – or inaction – than on their boyfriend's hair, or their own overblown victim-mentality, and how it affected others.
Caroline was a vampire.
And it filled Giulia with a quiet rage that Bonnie had been more upset about the dead carnie than about their oldest friend being turned – because of her – into a vampire. Caroline's life had been cut short: everything she had ever wanted for herself would probably never happen because of Bonnie's loose lips and bad attitude.
Caroline would never get married – never grow up. She could go to college as many times as she wanted but she would always look seventeen. She would never have children, never grow old with anyone. Never grow old with Giulia, in their Florida rest-home with bejewelled sweat-suits, pickled with colourful cocktails and driving golf-carts dangerously, wolf-whistling at the hot cabana-boys at the club. If Giulia could whistle.
They would never grow up together. Giulia would get older and older…one day she would die…and Caroline would remain unchanged. The eternal, highly-organised optimist, seventeen years old, fearless and kind.
That thought had come to Giulia again and again since realising Caroline had turned. Her best-friend would forever remain seventeen years old. Like Stefan. Vampires may age mentally, mature, but Caroline would always be seventeen physically. Her lips twitched as she stroked Firenze's head with her finger. Caroline would always fit into her cheerleading uniform.
One of the positives in Caroline's Pro/Con list – she was taking the Rory Gilmore approach to handling her own life transition, with chores and lists (the Boarding House had never been so clean) – was the fact she would never have to diet or exercise. Her figure would remain as slender as a whip for the rest of eternity. Giulia didn't point out that in the 1700s a grossly voluptuous figure had been the ideal for beauty, demonstrating the wealth to afford rich foods, or that in the 16th Century Elizabeth I had set the fashion for a falsely high forehead, hair being plucked from the natural hairline, eyebrows shaved off, etcetera… The idea of one's body staying the same forever seemed like a good one, in the beginning…but how often had vampires not fit the evolving fashions because at the time they were turned the world had been so utterly different? So she would let Caroline enjoy being able to eat three waffles in one sitting and never have to worry about the carbs. In fact, she had eaten continuously since they had collapsed onto the daybed and sofa in the great hall of the Boarding House, in shock and mentally and physically exhausted.
Sighing, Giulia glanced across the room at Caroline now snoring lightly under a mound of bedding Giulia had retrieved from one of the airing cupboards. Cold-blooded now, Caroline didn't get cold – but she was attracted to warmth, and she laughed half-heartedly that Giulia was like her own personal space-heater during the night – and a midnight snack, if she felt peckish and her self-control slipped. It hadn't, she had already proved she was not a Ripper. Like Damon, blood defined Caroline's new diet but it didn't define her personality. She had to have blood like Giulia did protein.
A deep sadness had suffused Giulia's body since her initial breakdown at Caroline turning. Rage was a dangerous emotion to indulge in, and a self-destructive one, and she preferred not to, but every time her thoughts turned to Bonnie an icy wrath crept through her veins, she tasted copper in her mouth and her hands shook; she had to suppress the urge to rip her apart with her teeth and fingernails.
Katherine had only taken advantage of a situation orchestrated – unintentionally – by Bonnie, but therein lay the danger: Bonnie was thoughtless. She had caused Caroline's transition due to simple carelessness.
She had obviously never seen the War-era posters: 'Loose Lips Sink Ships', 'Careless Talk Costs Lives'.
And apparently she still hadn't gotten over herself. The only reason Caroline was in the hospital at all, the reason Tyler's dad was dead, Damon almost burned to a crisp, the reason Caroline had needed Damon's blood to heal her, was because of Bonnie. Because she hadn't disarmed the Gilbert device Giulia had wanted to take a hammer to. They had been so sure of themselves – Elena, Stefan – convinced there was nothing Bonnie could ever want to do more than disarm a mystical object spelled to harm vampires – to hurt Damon. Damon, who she blamed all the world's evil on.
She bit her lip, scrolling through the call-log on her cell, squinting against the brightness of the illuminated screen in the dark room. Sheila was a number frequently called, their last phone-conversation nearly an hour long: she tapped a few texts away to Cara – she was giving up vibrators for Lent, Giulia was sceptical but supportive – to the girls on the cheerleading squad about a pre-Classic detox and pamper session: Tyler had been texting her about swimming-hole catering during spring break: Kelly and some of her new friends from UV about pre-break gigs and parties in the city, the last few Scavenger Hunt events before break, and she sighed, frowning at the three failed calls to Elijah. He had been incommunicado but other sources – she had been emotionally blackmailed into playing online poker with Vera in a vain hope that technology would reduce Giulia's odds of winning; but it was simple mathematics, the same she would apply to any slot-machine in Vegas – had informed her that Elijah was recruiting.
Whatever that meant, it felt ominous: coupled with her knowledge Elijah had signed a six-month lease on a condo in Richmond, and talking with Sheila Bennett, Giulia knew the cosmos was starting to align. Now, was she Hades, set to unleash the Titans upon the world to punish his brothers? Or was she Lara, following signs from her dead father to confront the Illuminati and destroy a time-bending Mayan triangle, to save the world from Iain Glen, whom she'd always rather liked more than Daniel Craig… Whether she was the gleeful villain or a reluctant hero, Giulia changed her mind day-to-day. All she knew was that she had to be prepared for what was coming. And it was coming; Elijah signing that lease, Katherine appearing in town… If there were ever signs of an impending apocalypse, the only thing less subtle would've been another Hurricane Katrina.
Giulia smiled without any humour: their very own Hurricane Katerina had blown into town, and had managed to destroy the already so tenuous relationships within their disjointed group in one night. She had manipulated already devolving situations and Giulia felt the only way forward now was to accept that Katherine was not at fault for all of what was going on. She was pressing buttons, manipulating situations they had left open for her to exploit – the bond between the four girls; the repercussions of Bonnie not removing the spell from that device; the gooey mess that was Damon's feelings for Elena; Damon's conflicting feelings for Katherine herself; and worst of all, the bond between the brothers, already so strained – healing, as it never had before in 150 years, but still strained, and Elena had wedged herself firmly in the middle. Their own mess had allowed Katherine to saunter in and wreak the havoc she was known for.
She set pensive in the dark, Firenze's purring becoming softer and less frequent as he dozed off, way past his bedtime. Since she had brought Caroline to the Boarding House Giulia hadn't had time to herself to check her phone, see if Elijah had responded to her voicemail, or even worry about homework still unfinished at her house: it had been not only a marathon of Gilmore Girls, junk-food and a shock-intro to Vampire Living, Giulia had had to fill Caroline in on everything she didn't know. Everything that had happened since Elena's parents' car had come off the Wickery Bridge last June…
Some things she had kept private. She told Caroline about the new friends she had made – Ashlyn; revealing that Cara and Vera, the distant aunts who had come to the Miss Mystic pageant were actually her ancient Florentine ancestresses, her entire family descending from Cara – but not Elijah. He was…still hers.
He was implicit in all this, and she was an expert poker-player: she never revealed her hand until it was time to win the game and clean out her opponents.
Maybe she'd dangle that guillotine over Katherine's head when there was just cause, but so far she hadn't had any interactions with her, and Giulia preferred to lull her into a false sense of her own overconfidence that this entire situation was her own to manipulate.
No, she hadn't told Caroline about Elijah. And…she hadn't told Caroline about the curse. It was naïve of her to even consider that Katherine had lost the moonstone, that Elijah was set only on capturing her, that no word would ever reach the deadly Klaus, but she clung to the faintest hope that her friends never had to be put through the machinations of an Original civil-war. From what she had read in Vera's diary, from what Cara and Ashlyn had told her, she knew the Originals were a family of brothers and sisters, bound by magic and blood for eternity, perpetually at war with each other. Why, she didn't know – but Cara had hinted there were two, on a slim chance possibly even three of the Originals travelling the earth of their own volition. What had happened to the others – Klaus: He had happened to them. And he would happen to them if things went awry.
She really just wanted to talk to Elijah now. He didn't know about Caroline, and she wanted to bawl and scream at the same time, she…wanted someone impartial to bitch to and cry in front of without feeling vulnerable, and talk things over with. She and Elijah had spoken almost every day since Christmas and it was a hard habit to break, just wanting to hear his calm, warm voice – he was so intuitive, knowing the right questions to ask, sensing when she was holding back, gently cajoling her – or forgoing talking at all when he sensed her mood was dangerous, instead they both worked out their frustration and feelings of helplessness. And she was learning more and more about the person Elijah was, not the reputation or the legendary figure, the eldest of the Originals…
He was an introvert, self-denying to a masochistic, self-destructive degree, concerned with everyone's happiness but his own. Phone-sex with him was as psychologically revealing as it was erotic; it took a combination of gentle cajoling, playful teasing and outright ferocity and selfishness on her part to get him to open up about what he wanted, and more importantly to tell her what that was. It wasn't in his nature to indulge in his own happiness.
Giulia guessed that in a life as long as Elijah's, he had had many experiences, all of them had made him who he was now, and every one of them had left its own scar on such a deeply loyal and protective person. A thousand years on and Elijah was surrounded by people who loved him, and yet he was never more isolated inside his own head than when he was in a crowded room. Vera had told Giulia once – in the midst of an online-Scrabble battle during which much wine had been consumed on Vera's part – that Elijah had neglected his heart for so long in favour of his better judgement that he had forgotten how strong love made him.
It broke her heart to think that of Elijah, and yet she could see it. She experienced it every time he resisted giving into his own needs when they were on the phone – but early on, she had refused to indulge him. And he had come to expect that he would have to be forward and selfish if wanted any of the delicious bits.
She sighed, eyeing her phone-screen, and locked it after sending a few texts. Caroline was sleeping soundly, and Giulia nestled Firenze in his little bed before tiptoeing out of the room. Downstairs, she eyed the refrigerator – despite having moved out, the Boarding House had turned into Grand Central Station for all supernatural lately and Giulia had stocked the pantry in preparation for Caroline's stay, their Gilmore Girls marathon. She couldn't sleep, her insomnia having returned with a heightened sense of anxiety – Katherine's arrival, Damon almost being lit up like Guy Fawkes by John Gilbert, again by Bonnie, knowing something none of the others did – the doppelganger, the sacrifice, the impending doom they all were threatened with, not from Katherine, but from Klaus… It was nearly midnight but she traipsed into the kitchen, brought out her copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking gifted to her by Caroline for Christmas, and set to making boeuf bourguignon.
She was drying off the stewing steak with paper-towel when she faintly heard the front-door open and close. Perhaps her noise – the heavy almost-antique Le Creuset casserole dish scraping against the hob as she seared the meat – or the scent of raw meat drew him in, and Stefan sighed, frowning at what she was doing, hands in his hoodie pockets before he slunk into a chair at the island.
"That's gonna take hours to cook," he observed. Then he frowned at her sombrely. "You not sleeping again?"
"Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answers?" Giulia asked gently, turning over a piece of meat to sear another side. She glanced up at Stefan. "Elena kept you late tonight."
"You and Caroline have your slumber-parties, we have ours," Stefan said, a twinkle in his eye; he was attempting to be humorous, but Giulia pretended to wretch and vomit in the casserole dish. He sighed, rolling his eyes. "Where's Damon?"
"He's gone on a blood-run – Georgia, and then Pocahontas County," Giulia said, and Stefan raised an eyebrow, surprised.
"Why Georgia? Or Pocahontas County?"
"Because it's out of pattern from where he's been hitting lately," Giulia said. She knew a decent haul from a hospital could sustain Damon for weeks, if he wasn't too indulgent – if he kept himself fuelled on booze and a high-carb diet. "We've now got two non-vegan vampires in town to cater for, and I for one don't fancy tapping a vein."
Stefan gave her a tired smile. "We both know if Caroline's life depended on it, you would."
"But it doesn't," Giulia said, hiding her astonishment that Stefan had this insight into her and Caroline's bond. He sighed softly.
"How's she doing?"
"She's asleep."
"That's not what I meant," Stefan said. Giulia knew that. She sighed, frowning. She set the tongs down that she'd been turning the meat with and eyed him shrewdly. His body-language, his facial expression – he was relaxed, calm, even, not in the least bit inclined for a confrontation; if anything he was wary. Since the night Caroline turned, everyone but Caroline seemed to be walking on egg-shells around Giulia. Damon and Stefan had known her since she was born – so had Bonnie, Elena, Caroline – and yet none of them had ever seen Giulia react the way she had.
She had…scared them. She knew that; she had scared herself.
But Caroline – she would astonish them.
"She's the same person she's always ever been, Stefan," Giulia said, saddened that nobody else could see it, defensive of her friend and annoyed by the reputation she had amongst others. She sighed and turned back to the casserole, turning the seared meat. "If anything her transformation's just helped her shed all the bullshit insecurities other people have piled on her." And by 'other people', she meant the constant struggle to compete with, let alone outdo, Elena. Car's greatest worry during the Miss Mystic Falls pageant had been that she wasn't good enough to beat Elena for the crown – a ridiculous anxiety, but to Caroline a very real one.
"Did she tell you about us going hunting?" Stefan asked, a smile lingering on his lips.
"You mean, you epically failing at trying to teach her to munch on bunnies?" Giulia corrected, amused, and starting to relax in the almost friendly atmosphere despite herself. "Yes, I heard about that – and she now knows all about the sad fates of Daffodil and Rumball." Stefan rolled his eyes, but he smiled still.
"What else have you told her?" he asked curiously.
"Everything," Giulia said, unfazed. She continued adding things to the casserole dish, following the recipe. She frowned at it, and glanced at Stefan.
"What's wrong?"
"Um… I need a bottle of red. Burgundy," she said, admitting with a wince, "I still don't know my way around wines."
"Well, we're a bourbon family," Stefan said easily. "I'll go find a great one." When he returned, he uncorked the bottle, smiling warmly at the rich sound it made, heralding an excellent vintage, and let it breathe while Giulia continued to prepare the meat. Stefan leaned against the counter, arms folded across his chest, sombre expression back in place.
"What's wrong?" she asked lightly, sensing something epically bad and not her fault, but something he was about to make her problem.
"I don't know if he's told you, or if you already know… The night Katherine killed Caroline, she'd first come here to see Damon… She got inside his head," Stefan said, sighing deeply. She waited for the kicker. "According to Elena, he got drunk, and went over to her house… They argued about…lots of things – he killed Jeremy. Snapped his neck."
Giulia glanced up sharply, her heart stopping. No. She hadn't known that. No-one had told her that – but then, she wasn't on speaking-terms with Elena.
"He's okay," Stefan said quickly, seeing the look in her eyes – her poker-face remained as flawless as ever, but like Damon, one could see worlds in her eyes. Stefan sighed. "He was wearing one of the Gilbert rings. Before he left town, apparently, John had given Jeremy his father's ring."
"So Jeremy came back," Giulia said, finding it difficult to talk with a throat so constricted. Stefan nodded.
"He came back – he was…terrified, but he's…adjusting," Stefan said, his tone ironic and a complete understatement.
"Why would Damon kill Jeremy?" Giulia asked, scrutinising Stefan's face.
"Katherine," Stefan sighed. "She got inside his head, she undid everything that was good about him." Giulia clenched her jaw, refraining from saying what she truly thought about Damon's goodness – he was more the Byronic hero to Stefan's comic-book villain/tortured-hero epic struggle of Jekyll and Hyde, Two Face/Harvey Dent.
"Damon wouldn't kill Jeremy because of something Katherine said," Giulia said quietly. "What did Elena say to him?" Stefan frowned, and Giulia sighed impatiently. She knew it was unkind to push, and he didn't like dwelling on the idea, but Damon had confessed to trying to kiss "Elena" the night Caroline ended up in the hospital – he was growing this gooey, mushy, disgusting and woefully misplaced feelings for Elena. Giulia was sure they resembled some sort of a tapeworm. But she knew it was there, that feeling Damon had for Elena, the Grinch's heart growing a fraction, but growing still… If Stefan wanted to ignore that, for the sake of wanting to keep the peace in the face of a greater threat, so be it, but Giulia wouldn't sit by and allow him to actively place the blame on someone else when clearly, Elena had had a hand in Damon reacting so homicidally. He didn't kill just anyone unless he was pushed to the brink and deeply upset, frustrated and helpless in the situation he found himself in.
"Giulia…"
"Stefan, you know your brother better than anyone," she said sternly. "We both know that Elena got to him way before Katherine did. So however he reacted, Elena triggered it. Katherine may have spilled the gasoline but it was Elena who lit the flame."
"Why are you so sure Elena had anything to do with it?" Stefan frowned.
"Because Elena is a girl who will draw you in, and when you ask too much she will push. She's a pusher – and she'll hurt you," Giulia said, with mounting annoyance. In the brief moment between Stefan's rehab and Katherine arriving in town, Giulia had seen Jeremy only a few times, due to her new schedule, but they had cleared the air a little about Giulia's role in the supernatural shit-storm their town was devolving into. Things were different between them but not as drastically bad as they were between Jeremy and his sister – it was one thing for Giulia to keep the secrets of her own family, but for his own to continue lying to him, despite the death of his girlfriend, his own endangerment, kidnapped by Elena's vampiric birth-mother, while his new vampire girlfriend had run out on him without a word… Elena had crossed a line with Jeremy, and no amount of threats from Damon had fixed the rupture between the last of the Gilberts. Jeremy felt, and hurt deeply; Elena was a pusher who had to fix everything immediately, her way, so she could feel better, so she didn't have to feel guilty. Jeremy wasn't that easy to appease, and he felt wounded and betrayed by her continued secrecy – and endangering Jenna by keeping her ignorant – that, at least, worked in Giulia's favour, one thing she clung to that there was still hope she could mend a relationship with him: that she had brought Jenna out of the dark, realising the danger they were all in.
She sighed and glanced at Stefan. "So what were they talking about that was so upsetting that it pushed Damon over the edge?"
Stefan pursed his lips, closing his eyes, but he admitted, begrudgingly, seemingly in pain, "She told me he said he has feelings for her, that what they've been doing the past few months, there is something between them… She told him it's…me. It's always been me."
"And to hear that after Katherine said the very same thing," Giulia said quietly. "What is it about these girls, they think they can just play with him? They can never deserve him." Katherine, first: he had loved her too deeply, she had become instantaneously bored before her excitement could even grow. Elena, now: something slow and cautious was growing inside a heart long afraid to feel, and she was frightened of it, resistant to what Giulia could see was happening. The two were bonding, she had seen it. She knew Damon wasn't the evil monster they all believed him to be by half.
Damon was the brother who pretended to be evil, Stefan, the one who pretended to be good. One wanted to get things done, actively played the bad guy because someone had to fill the role; and the other desperately wanted to be the hero, the good guy everyone turned to.
She wondered if Elena still even acknowledged that the vicious murder (investigation ongoing) in Grove Hill, the most brutal in the town's history, had been Stefan's doing. That he was capable of doing anything like that…sandwiching the parts back together after blacking out from gorging on the blood he so craved, riddled with guilt but driven by the rapture of blood.
Stefan was frowning at her thoughtfully. She arched an eyebrow at him, "What?"
"I…would've thought hearing he'd killed Jeremy would have a different effect on you," he said carefully. Giulia picked up the wine-bottle, debating whether to just down it.
"You said he was wearing a Gilbert ring," Giulia said, a calm suffusing her body. Jeremy was alive; therefore any reaction on her part would be superfluous to that simple fact. She sighed softly. "You'd think after a hundred and fifty years you'd have finagled a couple of those rings for your own family. Stolen them from the Gilberts you slaughtered in 1864."
"When I killed Jonathan Gilbert I had no idea about the rings – I left town before I could discover he survived my attack," Stefan sighed. He hated talking about his Ripper phases but Nurse Lexi said it was healthy for him to acknowledge his darker side, accept that there was that part of him, not ignore it in the hopes it would go away. "And at the time, I wasn't the Stefan who would've taken one of those rings to…to protect Damon's son." The infant who had survived childbirth, survived Katherine even, Giulia supposed… She wondered briefly how Katherine had regarded the tiny baby left motherless.
But it stung, what Stefan had said. That in a hundred and fifty years Stefan hadn't found a way to protect his family from – himself. From Damon. Between the two they had managed to kill off half Giulia's family, the ones who hadn't disappeared without a trace like her uncle, Joshua. That there was nothing he could have done in the interim to protect them, when he was so hell-bent on being the hero, protecting, saving everyone he could.
"Once upon a time you gave Elena that pendant filled with vervain to protect her," Giulia said quietly, remembering the night Coach Tanner had been killed. It felt like another life, when Bonnie had discovered her emerging witch powers, and Elena hadn't yet known the secret, pushing her way into their lives. That night, her dad had worked the snack-shack during the game… She eyed Stefan, tired and less willing to fight than usual. "You petitioned Bonnie to make a daylight-ring for Caroline, even knowing Bonnie's position in all this; did you ask her to make me an eternity-ring?" She touched the heavy lapis lazuli ring on Stefan's right hand, clunky and antique, Victorian to its core. She sighed, shaking her head when Stefan didn't respond. "That's all I'm saying…"
After a moment, she added the wine to the seared meat; it hissed and bubbled madly against the smoking-hot pan but the more wine she added, the more it calmed. She added the amount required in the recipe, and glanced at Stefan after taking a swig. "Damon snapped my father's neck too. He didn't wake up. And I'm still here. Making boeuf bourguignon and trying to make the best out of the mess you two have both made out of my life. You thought I'd be upset Damon killed Jeremy? He came back. That's the difference."
A.N.: What do you think? I want to convey that Giulia is pulling her shit together a bit more, she's maturing, she's dealing with the hand she's been given, she's not going to let the boys steamroller her life.
