Music: Dust to Dust- The Civil Wars
3rd Pov
Bonnie had felt something the night of Tanner's death but didn't know what it was; it was like an electric pulse or static shock that went through her body starting with her hands. She suspected it had something to do with all the weird things that had started to happen since the beginning of the school year but sensed that it could have been something more. Her grams had been telling her about her witch lineage and that she also inherited their powers, so she decided to talk to her about this along with the strange feeling she experienced from touching Stefan Salvatore's hand.
…
The Founder's Day party had been in full swing and the turnout was exceptional since it was a time-honored tradition for the founding families to congregate and celebrate their town's ancestry at the Lockwood/ mayor's mansion. The party was in full of important council members, pillars of the community and everyone in town, including the Salvatore brothers. Stefan had gone with Elena as his date while Damon was toying with Caroline Forbes, Elena's friend, and sheriff's daughter, to get close to the doppelganger. Damon was still peeved at Stefan for spiking his drink and stabbing him earlier in the day while Elena was conflicted with the recent information about Stefan she received from Bonnie, curtesy of Caroline's blabber mouth, and his relationship with Damon; as well as her encounter with him the night of Mr. Tanner's death.
Elena and Stefan had entered the display room of all of the town's historical artifacts, including the first Founder's party ledger. "The founding families of Mystic Falls… welcome you to the inaugural Founder's Council Celebration.' She read out loud from the aged parchment paper, 'Wow, look, it's the original guest registry. Look at all these familiar names; Sheriff William Forbes, Mayor Benjamin Lockwood. Is that… Damon Salvatore and Stefan Salvatore?"
"The original Salvatore brothers, our ancestors. Tragic story, actually. And if you look just below Stefan's name, you'd see Isabella Salvatore, their beloved big sister and matriarch of the Salvatore family." Damon introduced and pointed out as he entered the room with Caroline on his arm.
"We don't need to bore them with stories of the past." Stefan warned, both surprised and suspicious of his brother mentioning their sister when it was always a sore and trigger point for the volatile vampire.
"It's not boring, Stefan. I'd love to hear more about your family." Elena countered, wanting to know more about her mysterious boyfriend and to dispel her earlier doubts.
"Well, I'm bored, I wanna dance and Damon won't dance with me." Complained Caroline, feeling jealous as she watched the couple in front of her compared to her own relationship. Damon agreed with a "Hmm-mm." wanting to be out of the blonde's company while desiring to get the brunette alone.
"Can I borrow your date?" the blonde assertively responded, stating rather than asking for the male to take her on the dance floor without any regards to her date or his.
Elena was put on the spot, not knowing how to respond expect with a nervous "Oh, uh…"
"I don't really dance." Stefan quickly intervened, not liking how the conversation had taken a turn while his older brother was enjoying his discomfort.
"Sure he does, you should see him. Waltz, the Jitterbug, the Moonwalk, he does it all." Damon stirred the pot, reveling in the increasing anxiety of the couple that has been marked as his target since coming to town.
"You wouldn't mind, would you?" persisted the blonde, oblivious to everything around but her goal to be on the dancefloor with a Salvatore.
"It's up to Stefan." Finally quipped Elena, feeling more unrest with the mounting pressure of her friend and the presence of the oldest brother.
"Well, sorry but I'm not gonna take no for an answer." Concluded the Forbes, dragging the spoils of the conversation out of the room. With their presence now gone, the atmosphere of the historical displays became heavy and awkward with Elena fiddling with fingers and Damon glancing around to see if anyone else would be entering in close time.
"I wanna apologize to you…for being such a world-class jerk the other night when I tried to kiss you. There's no excuse, my therapist says I'm acting out- trying to punish Stefan." He began as he started to wonder about the room. Taking stock in all the artifacts that were so familiar to him as well as the pictures that lined the walls.
"For what?" answered the brunette, now interest peaked at the possibility of getting to the bottom of the brothers' feud and hatred.
"I don't wanna bring it up. Let's just say that the men in the Salvatore family have been cursed…with sibling rivalry. And it all started with the original Salvatore brothers' he paused as he stood next to the registry, faintly brushing a crooked finger along the name of Isabella Salvatore, a soft look flashing on his face before redirecting attention to the girl in the room. 'The Salvatore name was practically royalty in this town until the war. There was a battle here.."
"The Battle of Willow Creek." She quickly responded having it immediately pop into her head as was a recent topic in history class.
"Right.' He replied with a little smile, joyed that she knew some knowledge about their town and wasn't just a pretty face compared to the other girls he'd encountered in the past.
"I know, we talked about it in class. Confederate soldiers fired on a church with civilians inside." She continued the mock history lesson, remembering what Mr. Tanner had told the class for Founder's week.
"What the history books left out…was the that were killed, they weren't there by accident. They were believed to be union sympathizers. So some of the founders on the confederacy side back then, wanted them rounded up and burned alive. Stefan and Damon had someone they loved very much in that church. So much so that when they went to rescue them, they were shot. Murdered in cold blood, broke their sister's heart completely." He ended, a stab of pain hitting his chest at the thought of his beloved's face, tears raining down her cheeks as echoed cries faintly rang in his ears.
"Who was in the church that they wanted to save?" the girl oblivious to the man's sudden onset of agony due to the history of their home.
"A woman, I guess. Doesn't it always come down to the love of a woman?" he declared, an anguished expression taking purchase and on display.
"I'm sorry that you and Stefan have this thing between you… but I can't get in the middle of it, Damon. I just… hope you two can work it out." The doppelganger stated with the older man agreeing and exited the room to stand in the ballroom.
The night wore on as Stefan and Elena danced, then finding out about the injuries that Caroline was sustaining from Damon and demanding justice from the younger brother. The night dwindled down to Damon being incapacitated from the vervain he ingested from his attempt of draining the blonde and him being spirited away to the Salvatore cells in the basement. The evening had been a rollercoaster of drama that the partygoers hadn't noticed there was an audience to the scenes that played out.
Isabella
I watched as my youngest brother overtook my other half and dragged his unresponsive body into the old cells that were housed below the boardinghouse. Everyone was blind to the fact that I was here, watching their lives and roles like a live play, actors keeping in character as the audience was close up and never breaking scene. I witnessed my little brother's love blossom for this human girl that was painful to look at, the angry pain of my younger brother towards his younger sibling and him watching the couple prance about smitten while he was alone. He didn't notice that I was next to him, I was always with him and he didn't even blink like when we were humans- when I was alive. I knew I was dead, that didn't surprise me the least since I was there to witness the first great war and change of society.
What surprised me was that when I came to the Other side, I looked the same as I was when my brothers turned- back to the image of a twenty-five-year-old woman in her prime. I had been wondering this town and woods for as long as my brothers had been born as vampires but unlike them, I could never leave. I welcomed my children and grandchildren when it was their time to go and urged them to cross-over to paradise, as the good book says and what was drilled into my head as a child in church, while I remained. I noticed that while my body was buried at the site of my cottage when I was living and I could move around the town, I could never cross-over like there was something keeping me here and preventing me from gaining my eternal happiness; until I figured out after half a century that the reason was Damon. I was tethered to my twin and that as long as he was walking this earth, then so would I as a wraith with no hope of resting but with all the power and knowledge acquired with the passing of time.
I was angry, even vengeful at first towards my brother when I found out but as years continued I resigned to my fate as I watched over my family; morose to the fact that I will forever be on this land as life passed like a flowing river, only left with my memories of how we used to be as children.
3rd
The Salvatore family was prosperous and prominent with their two children having survived their infancy and were blooming toddlers. The twins had seen their sixth birthday and were expecting their seventh while beginning to engage with the other children of founder's in town. The parents were proud of them, showing signs of intelligence and strength as they interacted with George Lockwood, the young son of his friend Benjamin and Victoria Fell of the Fell's family. Giuseppe had been given the exciting news of both his wife Lillian expecting another child as well as his mother coming to visit from Italy; he had missed his family in the old country and was looking forward to introducing the matriarch to her first grandchildren from him, while knowing she had others from his brother and sister-in-law.
When his mother arrived at the sprawling manor by carriage a few days later, he and his family were lined up on the wide stares that led to the porch as the little graying woman was helped out by a coachman. Maria-Louisa Eugenie Salvatore Costa was a powerhouse in the form of a shrinking matriarch that ruled her family with the same vigor as she had in her youth. Her love for her family and its legacy so fierce that along with her powers as a powerful witch, made her a force to be reckoned with while still being a doting wife, mother, and now grandmother. She met her son with happy hugs and kisses to her daughter-in-law as she swept up the children into her strong arms. The woman absolutely adored Damon and Isabella and was even more floored to hear that another was on the way, demanding that she stay with them until the little bambino was born- which was met with no objections from the family.
With a letter sent back to Italy and a room set up for the older woman, the family continued with life as the additional hands helped both the parents and staff of the house. Nona Maria had taken dominion over the kitchen and was teaching both the children, Lillian, and kitchen staff old family recipes as well as improving existing recipes. She took charge of the twins and took them everywhere in town and took walks in the gardens as well as surrounding woods while teaching them about the properties each plant held. The twins loved their nona, listened intently to the elder everything she told them and absorbed all the information about their family and blood that ran threw their veins. She taught the children about their magical heritage, about how she was a witch and that their father knew about it while telling them that they too held magic.
She had been watching the children to see if they held any magical abilities and was delighted to report that her grand-daughter held potential to have inherited her legacy as a witch while Damon had good repelling and shield talents that each could cultivate into something more. Maria had also seen the dark mass that was circling her grandchildren like a noose or vulture, seen the entity and how it latched onto their backs as a sort of tether that connected the two further than just their sibling and magic bond. Observing the shadow for awhile and watching the interaction it had with the children and themselves, she started to conduct research on it to see if it was banish-able. After months of staying at her son's home and helping with Lily's difficult pregnancy, she came to the parents one night as the children were put to sleep with a simple sleeping potion; it was a very old blood curse that somehow found its way to the twins. She explained how it came from a very distant branch of Lily's side and that it was meant to influence and dictate the lives of the victims in order to stay active and alive, a parasite to the hosts if you will.
It only affected twins, since Damon and Isabella were the only twins to be born in over a century- it was ravenous as it finally found what it was searching for during that void. She tried to dispel it from the children, but it had been too ingrained into their persons that suggested it had affixed when they were born. What the parasite didn't account for was that it had latched onto a witch's family and that it's targets held magic of their own, so it had been weakened as it tried to find a vantage point to anchor on for a permanent fixation. She had found out that it had grabbed onto the twins' bond and by default their life source, to the point that if it were removed or destroyed it would either severely harm or even kill the children within seconds of elimination. So she came up with a plan on how to subdue the thing…
…..
A few more months had past since finding out about the twins' situation and Maria had taken it upon herself to start their lessons on magic, teaching them the ways of their ancestors and how to deal with the attachment that had crept into their lives unwantedly. She taught them spells, potions and brews, ways of channeling and focus to better concentration and flow of the spirit. She had even gone out and brought in a new slave woman by the name of Theresa La beau, a witch of different stock along with her daughter Grace. The women taught the children about the different kinds of magic and found which one worked best for the individual, Grace and Theresa leaning more towards ancestral and voodoo while the twins were more for nature-based forms. As the children grew in both body and magic, they figured out a way to shape and manipulate the entity to a less severe contract than what it had stated beforehand though still a heavy price to bear at such young ages.
It wasn't until the autumn that the family felt an oncoming wave of joy with the arrival of Giuseppe's new son, which they named Stefan Antonio Salvatore in honor of his father who was back in Italy. The children were ecstatic with the new addition, wanting to spend every minute with the babe before being shooed out to their tutor for their studies. With another letter to Italy announcing the birth of a second son, the family felt the reprieve they desperately needed and grateful to the ray of peace.
Isabella
I glided my way through the familiar path in the woods to the large structure that now counted as the manor for the remaining Salvatore family, since I sent my children over to Italy before the stock-market crashed in 1929. Passing through the heavy wooden door in my full-skirts, I took note of the tasteful décor before moving around the basement door and down its steps. Silent silk rustled as I moved down the cellar tunnels to the opening of the cell area, coming upon the tail end of Stefan's conversation with Zach and stood there while he brushed by my left shoulder. I stood there for a moment, watching the back of the eternal teen as he headed upstairs before making my way to the cell that held by infuriating husband. Spying his prone form on the dirt floor next to the table of growing vervain, I observe as he groaned and shifted his position a bit before giving out and just lying still on the floor.
Fazing through the barred window slots and regaining my form, I stood over his pale body; detailing his features and scanning his being after being separated for a century and a half to see how the years had been to him. A pang of pain hit my chest as I see a look of pain dominate his face, causing me to get closer and crouch down near his head. Seeing the strain and effects the vervain was putting on him, I gently brush the piece of hair that had fallen away on his forehead then proceed to swipe the sweat that was starting to bead up on his temples. My movements repeated for a small purchase of minutes, allowing it to smooth out the man's brow and put him at ease. With a smile gracing my mouth, I leave my spouse and journey up the staircases towards my other brother's room; passing under the door to reconfigure in the tidy space.
Quickly sweeping around the room taking inventory of Stefan's style of decorating, I turn to the bed with the body of a vampire fighting sleep while reading a book. A small huff of amusement escaped my lips as I remember all the times I've found him like this during his youth, a smirk lifting the corner of my mouth. Slowly creeping to the side of the bed he was occupying; I employed the same tactics I used downstairs resulting in the same result of Stefan relaxing and finally putting down the book. With a stretching groan, he placed the literature on the bedside table and sliding down under the blankets before reaching out to turn the lamp off. I moved to sit on the edge of his bed, continuing to stroke his hair as he drifted off into dreams while watching him like I did when he was a child.
With a final sweep and a smile still sitting on my lips, I drift into nothingness while leaving a lingering scent of lavender in both brothers' space. I drifted through the air and fog, through the trees and bushes as the inhabitance of the night went about their business. I wander a while until I pull myself together in the older section of the cemetery, started my trek by foot as I pass the original headstones of the town. Walking among the tombstones of friends and people I knew long since passed, leaves scattering with the breeze and my dragging skirts, I meander till I reach my destination- the Salvatore family crypt. Standing in front of it, I take a moment to admire the structure that was built half a century after my father's death, the same time the boardinghouse was erect, thinking about all my nieces and nephews that were laid to rest before entering and lighting the candles, fading away to sleep.
