[2x02; Brave New World]
"Katherine looked just like you, Elena," Bonnie said, retelling her run-in with Katherine the day before at Mayor Lockwood's funeral. "It was freakish."
Lucy kept her eyes on her clipboard, going over the list of things she had to do. She was co-planning the school carnival with Caroline and with the blonde in the hospital, Elena stepped up to help. Lucy hoped her sister would do well, but this was Elena—she wasn't the greatest at planning events.
Elena sighed. "She is my ancestor."
"I moved the student booth into the cafeteria," Lucy informed Elena and Bonnie. "And Katherine is my ancestor, too, and we hardly look alike."
"Yeah, she didn't just resemble you like a family member would," Bonnie agreed with Lucy. "She was you—except, you know, a vampire."
Lucy smiled and grabbed a large bag of prizes and walked over to the closest booth, Elena and Bonnie following with their own bags. She handed the student worker the prizes and moved onto the next booth, grabbing Elena's bag and handing it to the student behind the counter.
"I don't—I don't know," Elena shrugged, handing Bonnie's bag of prizes to Lucy to hand out. "I can't explain it, okay? It's creepy. It's all I got."
"Well, how do you know she's not still out there pretending to be you?" Bonnie wondered, raising her eyebrows.
"I don't but I could sit here and be tortured by not knowing or I could get these prizes to the ring toss like Lucy asked."
Lucy grinned at Elena, happy that her sister had actually been listening to her instructions.
"Have you talked to Damon since he killed Jeremy—or tried to kill Jeremy?" Bonnie continued her interrogation.
Elena went still and Lucy stiffened at the mention of the oldest Salvatore brother.
"Don't mention him," Lucy glared down at her clipboard.
"I haven't talked to him and I won't," Elena reluctantly answered her best friend. "and I don't want to talk about D—" she glanced at Lucy and winced, altering her words. "—him or anything else that's vampire related, okay?"
As they walked to another booth, Bonnie gave Elena a bag of prizes who gave them to Lucy. Lucy plopped them on the booth and continued on.
"I'm human," Elena went on. "I have to do human stuff, otherwise I'm going to go crazy."
"Okay, I'm sorry," Bonnie apologized. "I'll focus."
"Good," Lucy said simply, smiling at Elena and Bonnie as she checked off the last booth from her checklist. "We have to make Caroline proud or she'll kill all of us."
Bonnie laughed. "I don't know how you guys do all of this."
"Well, we're not human, obviously," Lucy winked at her.
Elena chuckled. "Obviously.
In the school, avoiding having to do the tasks that Lucy had messaged him in the morning, Stefan stood at Jeremy's locker. He handed Jeremy a vial of liquid vervain that he could ingest just in case his bracelet was gone.
"It's the same as the bracelet Lucy gave you," Stefan informed him.
Jeremy sniffed the vial. "So, it protects me from compulsion."
"Vervain is toxic to vampires."
"You mean like poison?" Jeremy said, taken aback that Stefan was giving him this information.
"Yeah, it's very poisonous," Stefan nodded. "It keeps them out of your head."
"I mean, why vervain?"
"I don't know," Stefan shrugged. "Certain natural herbs and roots and other elements are just harmful to vampires."
"Like a stake to the heart?"
"Right, but it has to be wood."
"You're pretty confident in yourself telling me all the different ways I could kill you," Jeremy pointed out, slightly amused.
Stefan chuckled. "Jeremy, if I thought you wanted to kill me, we would be having a much different conversation."
"Yeah," Jeremy's smile turned into a frown. "Damon is the one that deserves it."
Stefan wanted to agree with him but he couldn't. Jeremy couldn't be encouraged to go after Damon—Damon would kill him in a heartbeat just like the night before. It was bad enough that Stefan had to make sure Lucy wasn't going to try anything with his brother but now he had to watch Jeremy as well.
"I want you to forget about Damon, all right?" he advised Jeremy. "He's a hundred times stronger than you and right now, he's not stable. You gotta try to move forward."
"I was killed by a vampire and brought back to life by a magic ring," Jeremy chuckled bitterly. "How do you move forward from there?"
"Right," Stefan conceded. He paused for a split second as he smelt Lucy's peaches-and-coconut scent and heard her springy gait. "Well, today we have a nice little distraction courtesy of the boss lady, Lucy."
He smiled casually and turned to Lucy just as she came to a stop beside them. "Hello, Lucy."
"Hey," Lucy smiled quickly at Stefan then turned to Jeremy. "Do you—"
"Yeah, yeah, I set up the goldfish toss," Jeremy cut her off, knowing how she got sometimes when it came to planning events. "All three hundred goldfish. It's gonna be epic."
He slammed his locker shut and walked off.
"Thank you!" Lucy called after him and sighed sadly when he ignored her.
"He's gonna be all right," Stefan noticed the sad look on Lucy's face and couldn't help but try to cheer her up. "He's just been through a little bit of an ordeal."
"Yeah, I guess you could call coming back to life after having your neck snapped an ordeal," Lucy snapped. Immediately, she sighed, knowing that Stefan had nothing to do with Damon killing Jeremy. "I'm sorry, Stefan."
"It's okay, Luce," Stefan said, knowing that she wasn't mad at him. "I'm sorry that Damon—"
"Uh, uh," Lucy shook her head. "Don't say his name."
"Uh, I meant, George," Stefan humored her. "Anyway, I'm sorry about what happened to Jeremy."
Lucy shook her head. "It's not your fault," she checked her clip board, noticing that there were still a few things that had to be done. "Hey, did you set up the arm-wrestling station yet?"
Stefan winced. "Uh, no, not yet."
"Okay, well, can you get it done soon?" Lucy sighed. "The sooner this carnival can start, the sooner I can eat my weight in cotton candy."
Stefan laughed. "Your sweet tooth is showing."
"Well, I'm stressed," Lucy grinned, rolling her eyes at him. "Elena's looking for you, by the way. When I left her, she was by the dunk tank."
"Gotcha," Stefan wrapped an arm around Lucy's shoulders and squeezed her for a second. "You're doing great, Goofy. Don't be stressed."
Lucy chuckled, her heart fluttering. As Stefan walked away from her, she said, "Yeah, that'll make my stress go away."
"Hey," Lucy waved as Bonnie walked up to her later that night. The carnival was in full swing but Lucy's job was never fully finished. She had given Elena the go ahead to just hang out with Stefan instead of helping her and now she was subjected to walking around, clipboard in hands, and making sure everything was running smoothly.
She had yet to get herself some cotton candy.
"Hey, where's Elena?" Bonnie wondered.
"Having fun with Stefan somewhere," Lucy said absently, checking her clipboard for what seemed to be the millionth time that day. "What's up?"
"The ring toss is out of Bart and Homer dolls and Team Jacob t-shirts," Bonnie informed her.
"Okay," Lucy sighed. "I can grab some from the science club. We lost a speaker in the karaoke booth so I have to take care of that."
"Hey," Bonnie grabbed Lucy's arm, making her pause. "Take a second and look around, Luce. Everything's fine, this is a huge success."
Lucy smiled and looked around her, charmed by the colorful lights of the rides, noises coming from the games, and smells that wafted off the delicious yet ridiculously unhealthy carnival food.
"You're right," Lucy playfully nudged Bonnie. "This is my best feat yet."
"I'll say."
The girls laughed together before one of the carnival workers walked by them. Knowing that the worker could possibly help them with their problems, she called for him.
"Hey, you're Carter, right?" she recognized him from the orientation meeting she and Caroline had with the carnival workers. "You're with the carnival?"
Carter nodded, walking over to her and Bonnie. "That'd be me."
"Okay, great—"
"Wow," Carter awed when he caught sight of Bonnie. "What do you need beautiful?"
Lucy would have been annoyed with being ignored but the way Bonnie giggled at Carter's compliment was just too cute.
Bonnie pulled herself together and smiled confidently at Carter. "What do you know about karaoke speakers?"
"Why don't you show me the problem?"
"Yeah, Bonnie," Lucy grinned knowingly at Bonnie. "Can you show him the problem?"
Bonnie sent Lucy an amused look and then smiled at Carter. "Okay, come on."
Lucy grinned happily as Bonnie and Carter walked away and started off the other way, intended to grab some Team Jacob t-shirts from the science club's booth.
Somehow the night that Lucy was previously enjoying was turning into a mess. Shortly after she dropped off the t-shirts at the ring toss, Elena and Damon pulled her aside to tell her that Caroline had transitioned into a vampire.
Her best friend, Caroline, who could hardly throw a punch, was now a vampire and had kicked Damon's ass in an empty hallway.
Her confusion with the situation aside, Lucy was so worried about Caroline. Not only had she died, but now she was a vampire who had to drink blood for the rest of her life and would never grow old. The blood-drinking wasn't the worst part of it; Lucy knew how much Caroline dreamed of finding her true love, having a family with them, and growing old together. Now that dream couldn't happen the way Caroline wanted it to.
And if Caroline happened to hurt someone, it would destroy her. Caroline could be a bossy bitch sometimes, but she didn't want to harm anyone.
"How did this happen?" Stefan asked as he, Lucy, Elena, and Damon gathered in Alaric's classroom.
"Well, Joel fed her blood and Katherine obviously killed her," Damon said flatly. "'A' plus 'B' equals…"
"But why?" Elena asked.
"Because Katherine is a manipulative, nasty, little slut," Damon stated matter-of-factly.
"And she said game on?" Stefan recalled part of Damon's story that Lucy had forgotten in her worry for Caroline. "What does that even mean?
"It means she's playing dirty and she wants us to know."
"But why Caroline?" Lucy spoke up, biting her lip.
"I don't know," Damon admitted.
"Caroline must be completely out of her mind right now," Stefan said worriedly. "She has no idea what's happening to her."
"Oh, I think she does," Damon drawled. "All of my compulsion from the past started wearing off the minute she was in transition."
"We have to find her," Lucy said firmly, looking at Elena and Stefan, who both nodded.
"Yep," Damon nodded. "And kill her."
Lucy bristled at his statement and stood up from the desk she was sitting on. "You're not gonna kill Caroline."
"She knows who we are," Damon rolled his eyes. "She's officially a liability and we've got to get rid of her."
Lucy turned to Stefan desperately, hoping that he'd be able to talk some sense into his brother.
Stefan nodded at her and looked at Damon with a firm stare. "Damon, absolutely not."
"Need I remind you of a tragic little story named Vicki Donovan?" Damon chided, clicking his tongue. "Yeah, Caroline, of all people, will not make it as a vampire. Her mother is a vampire hunter. Guy's come on, we all know how this story's gonna end, just flip to the last chapter and—"
"It's not an option, Damon," Elena interrupted him.
Finally, she spoke up. Lucy thought that she was taking a bit too long when it came to the subject of Caroline's life.
"No?" Damon turned to Stefan. "Your silence is deafening, Stefan. Wait, wasn't there a school carnival the night you staked Vicki? Huh, talk about a town where history repeats itself. You know I'm right."
"Not happening, end of story," Lucy said firmly. She knew that she was the last person in their little group that they listened to, but she was not going to let Damon kill Caroline. Over her dead body would he even touch her.
"We're not gonna kill her," Stefan added as Lucy started walking out of the room.
"It's the only way," Damon called after Elena, Stefan, and Lucy.
Lucy marched down the empty hallway, determined to find Caroline if she was still at the carnival. She knew her best friend better than anyone in that room and she needed to find her before Damon did.
"Lucy!"
"Lucy, wait up!" Elena and Stefan called after her.
She slowed her pace but kept walking; they caught up to her.
"You agreed with Damon, didn't you?" she asked them, eyes narrowed.
"No, of course not!" Elena shook her head.
Lucy turned to Stefan. "Stefan?"
Stefan grunted, his temper flaring, and as the three of them passed by a food truck, he forcefully punched one of the walls.
"Stefan."
"Damon's right," Stefan confessed, making Lucy stiffen in disbelief. "Not about what we should do, but about what's going to happen. Katherine all but signed Caroline's death sentence."
"You don't know Caroline like I do, okay?" Lucy desperately shook her head; she believed that Caroline could live and be as normal as she could be as a vampire. "She'll be able to learn. She'll adapt."
Stefan cocked his head slight, considering what Lucy was saying. Could Caroline learn how to be a vampire and not destroy everything in the process?
Elena sighed heavily. "She's doing this to me, isn't she?"
Lucy gave her an astounded look, wondering how her sister could possibly take something that was happening to Caroline and making it about her.
"No, she's doing it to me," Stefan disagreed.
"Actually, she did it to Caroline," Lucy's temper seared as she glared at both of them. "Katherine killed Caroline and she may have done it to taunt you guys, but it doesn't really affect you, does it? Caroline is the one going through this mess right now and I'm not going to spend another second hearing you guys whine about this while Damon might be out there killing my best friend."
She turned away and stomped off, fuming. She ignored the calls of her name and pulled out her phone, dialing Caroline's number. There was no answer, causing Lucy's veins to flood with icy dread.
"Lucy, stop, I didn't mean it like that," Stefan said, catching up to her.
"I don't have time for this right now," Lucy waved him off. "Caroline's not answering her phone and—what?"
Lucy saw that Stefan had stopped walking; his worried vampire look was on display and he was looking around, nostrils flared.
"What is it, Stefan?" Elena asked. "Do you hear her?"
"What's going on, Stefan?" Lucy added anxiously.
"I smell blood," Stefan said stiffly. "Come on."
Lucy and Elena followed Stefan as he quickly led them through the carnival toward the bathrooms by the football field where the trailers for all the carnival equipment were parked. They found Caroline just as Damon pulled her into a hug and aimed a wooden stake over the back of her heart.
Stefan was a blur as he ran toward Damon and ripped the stake out of his hand. As Lucy and Elena ran to Caroline, Stefan pushed his brother away, throwing him to the pavement.
"Caroline!" Lucy breathed, pulling Caroline into a hug.
Caroline hugged her back but as Elena went to join them, she shrieked and jumped away from her. "Get away from me!" she cried, believing Elena to be Katherine. "You killed me!"
"No, no, no," Elena tried to clear things up. "That wasn't me, Caroline. You know that. That was Katherine."
"No, then why does she look like you?" Caroline's voice was hoarse from how scared her was. "And why? Why did she do this to me?"
Lucy grabbed Caroline's hand, trying to soothe her. She knew that she wouldn't be the best person to help Caroline with her vampirism, but she knew who would actually take the time to help her. "Stefan, we gotta get her inside."
Keeping his eyes on Damon in case he attacked, Stefan held out his hand as he slowly backed up toward Caroline and Lucy. "It's all right, Caroline. Come with me."
"She will die," Damon warned them. "It's only a matter of time."
"Yeah, maybe so, but it's not gonna happen tonight," Stefan rebuffed him.
"Oh, yeah, it is," Damon disagreed. He picked up the discarded stake and ran toward Caroline, ready to plunge it into her heart.
Lucy, Stefan, and Elena moved at once. Lucy and Stefan grabbed Caroline and turned her away as Elena stepped in front of them, facing Damon. She gasped as Damon stopped his attack right above her heart.
"Damon, she's my friend," Elena pleaded, eyes wide.
Damon slowly put down the stake. "Whatever happens, it's on you," he pointed at Elena.
"Okay," Lucy pulled on Caroline's hand, attempting to lead her into the bathroom. "Let's get you cleaned up, okay?"
Caroline started to follow her when Bonnie came out of nowhere and gasped at the blood coating Caroline's face.
"Caroline?"
"It's okay," Stefan encouraged the blonde when she looked down, ashamed. "Come on."
"You're not," Bonnie shook her head in denial. "It can't be."
She strutted forward and firmly grabbed Caroline's arm. Lucy knew that Bonnie was checking to see if she'd feel the same cold and dead feeling she had whenever she touched a vampire for the first time.
"Bonnie?" Caroline's voice was small and it broke Lucy's heart.
Bonnie shook her head and pulled away from Caroline. Caroline let out a sob as Bonnie looked over at the dead body of the guy Caroline drained and cried out in disbelief.
Lucy thought that Bonnie was just shocked that Caroline was a vampire—she'd get over it. She gave Stefan a significant look and he nodded back at her.
"Come on, Caroline," Stefan gently urged, helping Lucy pull her into the bathroom. "It's okay."
Caroline sobbed, heartbroken, as Lucy and Stefan guided her into the girls' bathroom. Lucy went straight to the sink and started taking out paper towels, wetting them and handing them to Stefan so he could wipe off Caroline's face.
"She hates me!" Caroline cried as Stefan cleaned her face. "Bonnie hates me."
"No, no, she's just in shock," Lucy gave Bonnie the benefit of doubt as she attempted to comfort Caroline. She grabbed the dirty towel from Stefan and handed him a fresh one. "We all are."
"And what about Matt?" Caroline's breathing picked up and Lucy knew she was on the verge of a panic attack. "What—what am I gonna do about—"
"Shh," Stefan consoled her, exchanging out another towel with Lucy. "One thing at a time. Let's just get this blood cleaned off. Come on."
Lucy handed Caroline a towel now, allowing her to wipe off her hands.
"I'm a murderer," Caroline was devastated. Lucy clicked her tongue and went to Caroline's other side, wiping off the blood that Stefan missed. "I'm a monster."
"Listen to me," Stefan told Caroline, completely serious. "Your emotions are heightened right now. It's part of the transformation. It's completely normal. I promise you, all right?"
Despite Stefan's soothing words, Caroline wasn't calming down. The veins under her eyes rippled when she looked in the mirror and the red of her eyes horrified her.
Caroline grunted in despair and turned around, her back to the mirror. Lucy backed off; however much she wanted to help Caroline, she knew she couldn't right now. Stefan was the one who would be able to help her—this was out of Lucy's league.
"Why does this keep happening to my face?" Caroline cried desperately, covering her face with her bloody hands. "I'm hideous!"
"Look at me, Caroline. Caroline, look at me," Stefan commanded, pulling Caroline's hand away from her face. "Look at me. Look at my face! Shh, shh, look!"
Stefan allowed his under-eye veins to creep up when Caroline looked at him. Seeing that Stefan went through the same thing she was, Caroline's breathing slowed.
"You see that?" Stefan asked; Caroline nodded. "When you feel the blood rush in, you tell yourself that you're gonna get through it, that you're strong enough."
Caroline shook her head.
"Yes," Stefan nodded his. "No matter how good it feels to give yourself over to it, you fight it off. You bury it. Watch me, watch me."
Caroline looked at Stefan through her tears and watched as his veins disappeared.
"It's the only way you're gonna survive this thing," Stefan stated. "Try it. Shh, try it."
Lucy watched, biting her lip, as Caroline inhaled and exhaled deeply, over and over again. Her veins slowly disappeared the more she relaxed with Stefan's encouragement.
"That's good," Stefan complemented her, slowly stroking her hair. When Caroline opened her eyes, he gave her a comforting smile.
"Why did Katherine do this to me?" she whimpered.
Stefan frowned and slowly shook his head. "I don't know, I wish I did."
Caroline grimaced and went to turn away but Stefan caught her.
"Hey, hey," he made her look at him. "I promise you, I will not let anything happen to you. Come here," he pulled her into a hug, letting her head rest on his chest.
Lucy couldn't help but tear up at what just happened. She felt so sad for Caroline as she watched her best friend struggle with herself but Stefan saved her. The way he comforted Caroline was the sweetest thing Lucy had ever witnessed in her life.
All the anger and disappointment she felt at him from earlier disappeared. Stefan had this weird ability to make everything better.
Lucy wiped her eyes and caught Stefan's soft gaze, smiling gratefully at him. She would forever be thankful that he was here in this moment.