[4x01; Growing Pains]
Lucy looked down at the canvas in front of her; her pallet of watercolors was to the left, her mason jar full of water right above it, and her selection of paint brushes to the right of the canvas. Stefan was across from her, his things assembled in an exact mirror of hers.
She could feel him staring at her but she ignored it, twisting her lips thoughtfully as she stared at the blank canvas. She had no idea what she wanted to do or if she actually wanted to paint. What she wanted was be there for Elena but Joel, Damon, and Stefan quickly put a stop to her plan.
It frustrated her but after they explained that Elena would have to learn to control her blood lust, she understood. She wasn't happy about the fact that Elena would wake up as a vampire and she wasn't there to offer her support. Still, it wasn't about her and if staying away would help Elena, she would.
Lucy leaned forward, picking up her paint pallet and the one in front of Stefan before standing up to put them back with her other paints.
"You don't want to paint?" Stefan got to his feet, collecting the mason jars full of untouched water.
"No, I don't," Lucy shook her head while stacking the canvases back in the piles with the others.
Stefan was a blur as he sped into the bathroom and dumped the water. He appeared a second later and sat at the foot of her bed. She didn't like the look of concern he was giving her; she was grateful that he was worried for her but felt like he thought she would break.
But she wouldn't. Sure, Alaric died but everyone else lost him, too. And Elena…Elena had died and now she was gonna be something she never wanted to be. Her emotions would be all over the place so Lucy needed to be strong for her.
"Lucy…"
"I'm fine, Stefan," she told him quickly; she didn't believe her words and neither did Stefan. "Look, I can grieve Ric when Elena's okay."
Stefan gave her a small smile and stood up, walking over to her and wrapping her up into a hug. He kissed the top of her head as she leaned her forehead against his collar bone, whispering a quick promise of his love.
Lucy leaned away from him with a weak smile. "I love you, too," she said quickly before sighing heavily. "Will you do something with me? I don't think I can do it by myself."
"Of course I will," Stefan nodded. "What is it?"
"I need to arrange a place for Ric in the Gilbert plot," she told him, her lips twisting sadly. "and I have to order a headstone."
Stefan nodded and kissed her forehead. He admired her so much; she was being so strong when faced with everything that was going on in her life.
Because they were outed to the town council, Lucy and Stefan made sure they were inconspicuous and quick as they set up Alaric's grave. It was a quick process as Lucy arranged to the last spot in the Gilbert plot to be dug up for Alaric with the owner and caretaker of the cemetery. When they were done, they went straight to the place who made the headstones for the rest of the family members who had died.
While Lucy had talked to the owner of the shop, Stefan was on the phone with Joel, who was giving them news about Elena. After his call was done and he and Lucy were left to design Alaric's headstone, he told Lucy what was going on.
Lucy looked at him in shock. "Bonnie's trying to find a way out of this for Elena?"
Stefan nodded. "She and Joel seem to think there might be a way."
"There isn't," she shook her head; Bonnie and Joel were just getting Elena's hopes up for something that was impossible. "Elena has one choice; feed or die."
"I'm inclined to agree with you, Luce, but you know Elena," Stefan sighed as Lucy scrolled through the different fonts they had to choose from. "She told me she didn't want to be a vampire."
"Then she's going to die," Lucy stated matter-of-factly; it shocked Stefan that she seemed so casual about her sister dying. Seeing the look on his face, she quickly clarified, "I don't want her to die, I really don't, but if it's her choice not to feed…I have to accept that."
Stefan nodded; he knew that free will was one of the things that Lucy advocated for the most. She had siphoned Klaus' compulsion from him and accepted that Alaric didn't want to transition for that very reason.
"Well, she has time to decide what to do," he stated.
Lucy pressed her lips together. "Yeah."
After finishing up with the order and paying for it, Lucy and Stefan split up. Stefan was going to bring Elena, Jeremy, and Joel some lunch from the Grill while Lucy was going to pick up Matt from the hospital and tell Caroline about the Tyler and Klaus situation.
Surprisingly, Caroline took the fact that Klaus was riding around in Tyler's body all right. She was worried at first but when Lucy assured her that she and Bonnie would put him into a different hybrid, she felt better about the whole thing.
With Caroline calmed down, it was Matt's turn to be worried about. When his truck went off Wickery Bridge, he had almost drowned. After Joel and Damon got the call from Rebekah, who ran the truck off the bridge in the first place, the two went to rescue Matt and Elena.
Elena's neck snapped on impact, though, so she was dead before the vampires could get to the submerged vehicle. While Damon had pulled Elena from the truck, Joel was tasked with saving Matt.
Matt was understandably upset about the whole thing. He brushed off the comfort Lucy and Caroline tried to give him and had demanded very insistently to his nurse that he be released.
"Elena doesn't want to be a vampire," Matt said to them angrily as he pulled on his plaid shirt.
"She doesn't want to be dead and now she's not," Caroline replied. "This isn't your fault, Matt."
"This is my fault," Matt insisted. "I was driving, I was saved. She's a vampire because of me!"
"Okay, first of all, you were saved because you were still alive, Matt. Elena was already dead," Lucy said firmly, trying to get him to see to reason. "Second of all, you have to keep your voice down, okay? Caroline's a fugitive and who knows what the council will do to me."
Matt calmed down slightly and gave them an apologetic look. "If the council's after you guys, then why are you here?"
"Because Elena has a decision to make and I want to be by her side when she makes it," Lucy told him.
"And we can't leave until Klaus is out of Tyler's body," Caroline added.
"Besides, you're our friend, Matt," Lucy grabbed his hand and squeezed it. "We wanted to see if you were okay."
Matt sighed heavily, his lips quirking into a small smile, and brought her and Caroline into a group hug. The two of them returned the hug until Caroline stiffened and pulled away, looking at the door with wide eyes.
She hurriedly pushed Lucy toward the bathroom, whispering something about a council member, and then left out the window. Lucy stood quietly in the bathroom, hand over her mouth, as Matt defensively questioned the man who entered his room without permission.
Once the man left and Matt called her name, she left the bathroom. If the council was looking through the hospital for vampires, that couldn't mean anything good. They were officially on the move and taking a stand, which meant Stefan, Caroline, Joel, Damon, Tyler, and Elena were in danger.
She and Matt looked at each other in realization. "We should check on the others."
No sooner did Lucy and Matt leave the hospital that they got a call from Liz. Caroline had been ambushed and taken by the town council outside of their house. There was more bad news than that, too. Damon had called Liz and it turned out that Stefan, Elena, and Joel were taken by the council after they broke into the house and attacked.
Lucy drove faster when she hung up with Liz, trying not to panic at the thought of her best friend, siblings, and boyfriend being taken somewhere to be killed. Matt was a big help in keeping her calm, assuring her that he, Damon, and Liz were going to help her get them back.
Surprisingly, Meredith was at the house with Damon when they arrived. Before Lucy even had time to ask her why she was there, Damon had sped over to Matt and was pressing him against the wall, his hand clenched tightly around his throat.
"Damon!" Lucy shouted at him as Damon bared his fangs to Matt threateningly.
Damon ignored her and growled at Matt, "In what world are you the one that gets to live?"
Matt choked from lack of oxygen but didn't dare fight back. Lucy shook her head in exasperation and siphoned some of the last magic she had in her necklace. She raised her hand toward Damon and moved it to the left, picking him up and throwing him across the room.
"Damon, Elena's death was not Matt's fault and you know it," she glared pointedly at the oldest Salvatore. "If you touch him again, I'm gonna snap your neck."
Damon rolled his eyes at her as he got back to his feet. "Oh, I'm sure, Twitch."
"Stop," Meredith spoke up firmly, giving Lucy, Damon, and Matt a firm look. "Look, we have to work together to find out what's going on."
"We know what's going on," Damon argued. "They're gone. Whoever nailed Rebekah took them, too."
Lucy paused at the mention of Rebekah. She hadn't known that she was taken too but she was a little bit assured that the council didn't have the white oak stake. There wasn't a way to kill her without it. Despite her anger with her oldest sister, she was glad she wasn't in imminent danger with the council like the rest of her vampire loved ones.
There was a quick knock on the door before it opened and Liz entered the house.
"Caroline called me," she told them. "apparently Klaus and Tyler rescued her or something, she was a little blurry on the details."
Lucy sighed in relief; Caroline was safe, now there were four left to rescue.
"Okay, please tell me you have something other than that," Damon sighed, unconcerned with Caroline's safety. "Anything."
"I can't," Liz shook her head. "The council locked Carol and me out of our offices, files, computers…everything."
Damon gave her a look of pure disbelief. "So, the mayor and the sheriff never contemplated a back-plan, Liz?"
Lucy sighed, fed up with his anger putting a pause to the real problem. "Damon, relax," she advised him before turning to Liz. "When Care called you, did she know where they were planning to take her?"
"No," Liz shook her head. "just that she was in some van in the middle of nowhere."
"Perfect," Damon muttered bitterly. "We've narrowed it down to nowhere."
"Look, with your vervain and Ric's weapons, they could be anywhere," Meredith sighed.
"It takes a lot to hold a vampire," Damon started pacing across the living room as he tried to think of where the others could be. "Reinforced steel, iron doors…"
"The pastor has a cattle ranch," Matt spoke up thoughtfully; everyone turned to him curiously. "Those pens could easily be modified."
Lucy nodded in agreement. "It's remote and secluded."
Damon thought for only a few seconds before he nodded. "Fine, let's go," he finally agreed before looking straight at Matt. "Looks like you'll get the chance to redeem yourself."
"Bonnie, I'm telling you to wait," Lucy spoke into her phone pleadingly, wishing Bonnie would just listen to her. "Once I'm done with this, I'll come and help."
Bonnie had called her on the way to the cattle ranch, frantically telling her that she had tried to save Elena but the spirits wouldn't let her. She had passed out trying to and now Jeremy was adamant that she didn't try again. Her magic was absolutely exhausted and now Klaus was demanding that he be put back into his body—which was preserved with Alaric cut off the oxygen supply to the fire his body was engulfed with when he was staked.
Lucy had told her that she would come help her after rescuing Stefan, Joel, Elena, and Rebekah but she wasn't listening. If Bonnie pushed herself too far, her magic may disappear forever.
"Okay," Bonnie finally sighed. "I'll try to stall Klaus but I make no promises."
"I'll contact him," Lucy sighed, giving Damon a hard look when he nudged her insistently. "I gotta go, Bon. I'll see you soon."
"Be careful."
"You, too."
Lucy hung up the call and immediately drafted a text message to Tyler's phone, hoping that Klaus was still holding onto it. She told him to wait until she could do the spell herself and then sent the message.
"Okay," she turned toward Damon, who was glaring out the windshield of his precious Camaro. "What's the plan?"
"Me and the quarterback back there came up with one," Damon told her tensely. "You just worry about getting to Elena, Stefan, and Joel."
"They'll probably be in the building closest to the house," Matt informed her, having been to the pastor's house many of times when he was in middle school. Before he was the main pastor at the Mystic Falls Baptist Church, he had been a little league coach for the team that Matt and Tyler played on.
"Sounds like a plan," Lucy agreed while looking back at Damon. "I'm gonna need to—"
Damon held out his arm without a word; Lucy gave him a thankful look and grabbed onto it. Her palm and Damon's arm—where she was touching it, anyway—glowed red as she started siphoning from him. The powerful buzz she always got while siphoning flooded through her body and made her feel euphoric but she cut herself off when she had enough magic for the rescue.
Damon winced from the pain but said nothing.
"Thanks," she whispered when she pulled away. She kept the magic in her body since they were close to the ranch; she would use the magic from Tyler to get Klaus back into his original body later.
They arrived to the pastor's ranch only minutes later. Damon parked out in the front and the three of them piled out ceremoniously.
"Okay," Lucy hovered on Matt's right side as they stared at Pastor Young's house. "We should probably start that plan you guys made…"
"With pleasure," Damon muttered before he lunged at Matt. Before Lucy could even react, Damon had ripped into Matt's throat and drank some of his blood.
He roughly pushed Matt on the ground, blood around his mouth, and turned to the house. "Yoo-hoo!" he called tauntingly. "Anybody home? Big, bad vampire out here!"
Lucy's panicked eyes darted from Matt to Damon and then the house where the door was being opened. Pastor Young appeared behind his screen door but he didn't dare leave his house.
"Let him go," Pastor Young called to Damon. "the boy's innocent."
"Well, that's the point!" Damon snarked. "Give us Elena, Stefan, and Joel and he's all yours."
When Pastor Young hesitated, Damon grabbed Matt by the back of his neck and stood up. "Come on, Pastor," he goaded the older man. "You know I'll kill him. I want to kill him."
Lucy bit her lip nervously. Damon was going off the rails; she'd have to fight him, too, if he decided to kill Matt just to make a point.
"Go away!" Pastor Young shouted. "You're not invited in and I'm not coming out!"
A shot went off and Lucy immediately ducked, grabbing Matt and pulling him onto the ground. Damon was shot in the process, falling to the ground next to them. When Lucy scrambled over to Damon and dug the wooden bullet out of his shoulder, he grabbed her arm.
"When I attack these fools—" he nodded to the two men armed with huge guns that were approaching them. "you run. Go get them, okay?"
Lucy nodded. "Okay," she breathed. "be careful."
The two men got closer; when Damon jumped to his feet and used his vampire speed to grab one of them, Lucy took off. She ran around the house, spotting the nearest building only a hundred or so yards away; it had smoke billowing out of the roof and she could smell the vervain in the air.
Matt was right, they were in there.
Lucy readied herself when a man ran out of the building, his gun cocked and aimed. She raised her hand and waved it toward him, throwing him against the building. The man groaned in pain but Lucy kept running, using more magic to knock him out against the hard metal sheeting covering the outside of the barn.
The large barn door swung open as another man walked out, having heard the commotion of Lucy attacking his friend. With a clench of her fist, his gun flung out of his hands and he was slumping toward the ground, unconscious.
It almost seemed too easy but Lucy had been practicing with Joel and Alaric before everything with Esther went down. As she went to enter the barn, she stopped, hearing Rebekah's soothing voice speak to one of the last guards.
"Here's the thing," Rebekah said weakly. "My family, we—we have money, castles, apartments, jewelry…Just name your price and let me out."
"I'd much rather you die," the guard spat at Rebekah just as Lucy entered the barn. He aimed his gun at her, cocking it threateningly; Lucy held up her hands and gave him an innocent look. "Stop! Get the fuck out of here."
Behind the guard, Lucy saw Rebekah and Stefan step closer to the bars keeping them inside the stalls. They each nodded at her; she didn't take time to even think about what they were trying to tell her. She just went with her instincts.
The guard was shouting something at her but she didn't listen she simply waved her hand; the man flew through the air toward Rebekah's stall and the blonde took the opportunity to grab the man's neck. She forcefully snapped it and let the body fall to the hay-covered ground.
"Lucy!" Stefan was quick to get her attention. "Elena hasn't fed."
Lucy blinked and looked around, trying to find the stall her sister was locked in. Joel was yelling at her, giving her the location of Elena and she followed his voice. Elena was sat against the wall of her stall, pale and weak.
She looked so dead that it made Lucy gasp.
"Luce?" Elena breathed as Lucy hurried to try to unlock her stall. "You're here."
Lucy's eyes stung as they filled with tears. "Yeah, I'm here, Lena," she finally got the door open and knelt down next to her. "What do you want to do?"
It was up to Elena whether or not Lucy would give her blood. It was her choice.
"Blood," Elena said weakly. "I need blood."
Lucy didn't waste time, she pulled one of the bobby pins from her hair and pulled the protective covering off her with teeth. She pressed down hard on the skin of her wrist with the newly sharpened edge, creating a small cut.
"Here," Lucy held her wrist up to Elena, looking away so she couldn't see the blood.
Elena weakly grabbed her arm and pressed her mouth to the cut. She began drinking, much rougher than when Stefan drank from her that one time, making Lucy wince in pain. She only expected Elena to drink a little so she would complete her transition but Lucy could feel herself getting weaker with each pull her sister took from her wrist.
"Elena, stop. Stop."
Elena listened to her and pulled away; the whites of her eyes were red, veins popped out from underneath them, and her canine teeth were sharpened into fangs. "Oh, my God," she whimpered when she saw Lucy slump away from her. "I'm so sorry, Lucy."
Lucy waved her off; she'd heal. "Go find Damon," she told her. "I'll get them out."
Elena nodded and sped out of the stall, using her vampire speed for the very first time. Lucy slowly got to her feet, using the bars to help her up, and went to Stefan's cell. She could feel his worried gaze on her as she fumbled with the lock but she couldn't get distracted. Her eyesight was going blurry and she had to get the door unlocked before she passed out.
Just as she pulled out the last part of the lock, she felt herself crumple to the ground, the world around her going black.
"Lucy, this can wait until you're feeling better," Stefan insisted, pacing back and forth in front of her bed as she flipped through the pages of her grimoire. "It's only been an hour. Elena will be fine for a night."
"No, the sun's almost setting," Lucy was being stubborn and it irritated Stefan. Her skin was still so pale and the bandage wrapped around her wrist had him flinching every time he got a glimpse of it. She wouldn't let him heal her, though. "I want to get this done."
"And why can't Bonnie do it?"
"Because my brother is an asshole who doesn't know how to be patient," Lucy huffed. "He forced Bonnie to transfer him back over to his body and now her magic's messed up or something. Caroline couldn't really explain but she said Bonnie couldn't do it."
"Well, is she okay?"
"I'll check on her tomorrow," Lucy looked up and gave him a small smile as she turned to a certain page. "Found it. Do you have the ring?"
Stefan nodded and dug his hands into his jeans, pulling out the lapis lazuli ring Damon had picked out for Elena. "Here you go," he handed it to Lucy as she hopped off her bed. "Are you sure this is the right spell?"
"Yep," Lucy confirmed, walking across her bedroom to her window seat where the last light of the day was streaming. She set the ring down and read through the daylight spell once more to make sure it was correct.
Lucy had siphoned some magic from Stefan earlier so all she had to do was cast the spell. She closed her eyes and recited the incantation in her head, casting the protective spell on the ring. Once she was sure it was ready, she opened her eyes and turned to Stefan with a smile.
Stefan couldn't resist giving her once of his handsome smiles back. "Is it done?" when Lucy nodded, he went on, "Are you feeling okay? Do you need something to eat? Some juice?"
"I'm okay, Broody," she assured him, walking across the room to wrap her arms around his waist. "Though, maybe some coconut cake will help me feel a little bit better."
Stefan grinned fondly. "You and your coconut cake," he kissed her forehead. "Hey, I was thinking…"
"Uh-oh," Lucy mocked him playfully.
"Very funny," he stuck his tongue out her. "You're being all sarcastic while I'm trying to ask you to be my girlfriend."
Lucy reared back in surprise. "Your girlfriend?"
"Yeah, that's usually the next progression of a relationship when a man and a woman confess their love for each other…"
Lucy rolled her eyes in amusement. "Who's being sarcastic now?"
Stefan chuckled and quickly pressed his lips against hers. When he pulled away he dramatically asked, "Lucy Gilbert, will you be my girlfriend?"
"If You kiss me again, I will," Lucy dared, looking at him with a loving smile.
Stefan's grin widened into the full-blown dimpled smile that Lucy adored. "Well, how can I resist a deal like that?"
And, as if they were in a romantic comedy, he dipped her and silenced her happy squeal with a passionate kiss.