"My point of view has been altered . . .
. . . I just wanna rock the boat and raise some hell.
Set fire to my own damn bed 'cause I never wanna sleep again.
I just wanna rock the boat and kiss and tell.
Set fire to my own damn mind and leave inhibitions behind.
But I don't care about the repercussions.
I don't care about the repercussions.
Just as long as my blood keeps rushing."
The sound was loud, the front of the SUV smashing much harder than the hybrid inside was prepared for. Had it been Jeremy, he probably would've taken the most damage, but Kol put himself in front of it instead, risking not only his secret but his safety.
What did he expect his hybrid to say then? "Oh, a vampire stopped me from killing Jeremy, but it wasn't any vampires we've seen in town so far."
He had stood his ground when the SUV hit him, which was what caused all of the damage to the vehicle. His own arm looked completely bent out of shape, especially as I got closer, but he just snapped it right back, like it was nothing.
For him, it probably wasn't.
While the hybrid was stun locked, from both the wreck and the surprise turn of events, Kol rushed around to the driver's door of the SUV and ripped the guy out. The hybrids eyes began glowing yellow, and he lunged for Kol, who had his heart torn from his chest before the guy even got a chance to sink his teeth into him.
It wasn't the first time I had seen this kind of thing, as there had been plenty of death in Mystic Falls, but I wasn't even standing ten feet away when it happened.
He tossed the extracted heart into the open door of the SUV, shoving the body to that side as well. There was blood dripping down his hand, as if he had just dipped it into a bucket full, but he didn't just hop in the car and drive away.
Instead, he slowly turned back to face me, back to face my sister and Alaric, who stood a good ten feet away from me.
"You stay away from us!"
Elena's words were trembling, and I found myself spinning back on my heels away from Kol, towards my terrified twin sister. "Wait! He's not going to hurt us. He just saved Jeremy!"
The fear dissolved into anger, which was burning even brighter than the fear had been. "You knew he was a vampire?"
"Of course I did," I said, but to try and deflect some of the anger away, before it got to me too much—I hated making Elena mad at me—I folded my arms over my chest, shifting my weight to the other side of my body. "I can feel the magic in a vampire's blood, remember?"
"W-Why didn't you tell us?" she asked, her words so choked with rage that they were struggling to leave her lips.
"Because with everything going on right now, I didn't think you would trust him," I insisted. "You would think he was working for Klaus, but he's not. He hates Klaus, more than we do."
"So is that why you're here then?" Elena asked, finding a way to shift her anger away from me as well. "To figure out a way to take down Klaus?"
"That was why I came here, yes," Kol said, speaking up for the first time since everything had happened.
This was it, now or never. What had been a well-kept secret for almost a month was suddenly blowing up in our faces.
Of course we had prepared a lie to tell, a story to give him that didn't let them know he was an Original vampire. It was so eloquently woven with the truth that we would be able to pull it off, if I executed it right.
She took a deep breath, her anger faltering just a touch. "And my sister?"
"Took me by surprise."
This wasn't the response I think she expected to hear from him, but it was enough to calm her down. Her eyes weren't burning, though her posture was still very stiff, her shoulders pulled back as her jaw set. "Fine. If . . . if my sister trusts you, so do I. What do you know about Klaus?"
"More than you could even imagine," he said, taking a deep breath as he watched her relax just a little. He had mentioned once that if anyone ever found out he was a vampire, he didn't necessarily need them to like him. He just wanted them to trust him with me, to know that he wasn't going to do anything to hurt me. "Let me do something with the body, and we'll talk."
Though I wanted to stay by Kol, to make sure he was alright, I had to check on Jeremy. The fall from Kol's push had probably been pretty rough, on top of not knowing why any of that was actually happening.
When I got around the SUV, I found him sitting on the grass, his arms wrapped around his legs as his eyebrows furrowed.
I knelt down in front of him. "What did Klaus say to you? On the phone."
"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't remember. It had to have been him, though, right?"
"It was him," I agreed, and I sat down on the grass beside him, close enough that he could feel the comfort but far enough away that he had the space he always desired. "Are you okay?"
"A bit sore, but I'll live," he said, sending a half-smirk my way. "Thanks to your new boyfriend."
"He's not gonna hurt us," I said, but I was able to smile back at him. "He wants what we all want."
Jeremy took a deep breath and made his first attempt to stand back up, which was met with great resistance. He was probably more sore than he realized, but the pain didn't rear its ugly head until he actually tried to move.
"We'll see."
Kol stepped around the car now as well, offering a hand down to Jeremy. "I'd offer you some blood, but you probably don't want anything from me right now."
"No, man, it's not just you," Jeremy said. "I haven't seen a good side to having vampires around yet. You saved me, though, and I'm grateful for that. You could've just let me die, and no one would've known there was anything you could do to help me."
"Believe it or not, I care more about protecting Darcy than keeping my identity a secret," he said, around the same time Jeremy actually took the hand he had offered down to him. "Are you sure you're alright, mate? I'm afraid I pushed a bit too hard."
"Nah, I'm good," he disagreed. "Thanks for, you know, saving my life."
"Do me a favor and put on your ring," he said, and from the way he locked gazes with Jeremy, I could only assume he was compelling him. "Don't take it off unless I tell you otherwise."
Jeremy blinked a couple of times, but he nodded. With a furrowed brow, he stepped around Kol, around the busted SUV, and headed inside, back wherever he had put the Gilbert ring, which on other occasions would've saved him from dying from that car crash.
Pushing myself up from the ground was a lot easier for me than it had been Jeremy, and I stepped closer to Kol, leaving no room between us for anything more than air and maybe a thin stick. "Thank you."
Kol's gaze peeled away from my brother as he reached the porch, coming over to find me so close to him. There was something dark inside, but burning past that was the same things I had seen just a few minutes ago, when we were back in my room being a normal couple.
As normal as we could be anyways, all things considered.
"I'm so sorry."
"Don't be." I placed my palm against his cheek, and his face seemed to curl into the touch. "You saved my brother."
"I'm going to have to be a little more careful," he murmured, and he placed one of his hands onto mine. "While I'm gone, make sure your sister doesn't tell all her friends. The less people who know one of the doppelgängers is dating a vampire, the better."
"Okay."
The one single word was hard to get out, after the word he had said for the first time. Nothing much had been said about what we were, and while I considered us to be dating, it had never been formally discussed. We hung out like a normal couple would, but Kol had never said the words "dating" or "girlfriend." All he had told me was that I was different from other women he had come across.
This was a real relationship. This was real.
His lips grabbed onto mine with the fervor of a goodbye, but I knew it was only temporary. After getting rid of the body, as I'm sure he was pretty good at, he was coming back to explain everything to us.
It was goodbye for now, though, which in Mystic Falls could mean goodbye forever.
Today wasn't going to be one of those days, thanks to his daring rescue. It had been easy enough for him to do, but there was a consequence attached, something he didn't even seem to think twice about.
When his lips let go of mine, he walked back around the SUV and climbed in, wasting no time putting it in gear and driving off.
With all the damage done to the front of it, I was pretty impressed that it still worked.
As I watched him drive away, with just the drops of blood and scattered pieces of glass strewn about the street, my mind wouldn't stop thinking about what he had said for the first time. It was a horrible thing to think about, in the face of everything that had just happened, but it was all I could think about, at least right now.
One of the doppelgängers is dating a vampire.
Labels and words had never been such a big deal to me, but hearing Kol say them gave them an entirely new meaning.
He wouldn't waste his time dating someone that he didn't think he'd be able to be with forever, if there wasn't even the slightest possibility.
To him, I was a potential forever.
A/N: The lyrics are from the song repercussions by Bea Miller.
I got a chance to post another chapter today, so here it is! When I originally planned to only post one chapter, I didn't actually realize the cliffhanger that it ended with until I was posting it. Haha. But, here's the next chapter, last one for the day. :) It's not such a bad cliffhanger, though there are still some questions left behind.
To salvatoresister887, I tried to be specific in the prologue about her eyes and hair but may not have been. Idk if there's another chance where I can put in the way her hair and eyes look, but I will try. One eye is a very pale blue, ice blue basically, while the other is the same chocolate brown as Elena's, and her hair is ash brown, kind of a greyish tinted brown. It doesn't really look grey, but it's kind of a dull brown. I think the color is pretty, but some people don't.
Read, review, and enjoy! :)