I woke up in the morning and decided to call Rachel. I hoped that she hadn't had sex with Caroline. The girl was too drunk and vulnerable for that.
"What?" She answered.
"Hello to you too." I replied. "So how did things go with Caroline?"
"Well I had to hear her crying a lot and had to tell her that she wasn't stupid and good god give this girl some vervain, as in today." She replied. "So what happened after I left."
"Damon killed Lexi." I said softly. I was hoping that she wouldn't hear me, even know I knew that likely would not be the case.
"I'm sorry. Did you just say that Damon killed Lexi?" She asked.
"Yes." I replied sheepishly.
"Well you better say that he's dead next." She replied.
"He's not." I replied. "Stefan looked like he was going to do it, but I stopped him."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" She asked. "What reason could you possibly have for wanting him to live?"
"He's family." I remarked.
"Yeah and so was Zach." She argued. "Are you telling me that you don't have a problem with this? Damon is a monster that needs to die."
"He was blaming her for the deaths. Now no one will be after us." I pointed out.
"You know what else would have gotten them to not be after us: killing Damon." She stated. "We do not sacrifice our friends."
I would say that Lexi wasn't my friend since I just met her, but I didn't think it would be appropriate to do so.
"I don't expect you to understand." I declared. "I'll see you at school."
I then started to get dressed putting on a black tank top with a black cardigan and a white pleated swing skirt and tights with a pair of black heels. I wasn't sure if Stefan was mad at me but he seemed to not be ready when I was about to go to school.
"Stefan, if you're not here in ten seconds, I'm leaving without you." I declared. I didn't get a response, but I didn't have time to check on him so I just left. I knew that I needed to talk to Elena because I was pretty sure that she had questions on the status of Damon's life.
However, when I got there, I found her talking to Caroline. It was some kind of drama with her and Bonnie.
"I'm out of it." Elena said before she noticed me. "Hey Brandy."
"Hi." I greeted them. I couldn't tell Elena about Damon with Caroline her presence. I would have to wait to do it until later."
When I got to History, I found that Kelsey was not there. I wondered if that meant that they had hired a new teacher. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw a man in his early 30s walk in. I then noticed the name Alaric Saltzman on the board. I assumed that was his name and it was a unique one.
"Good morning, Class." He greeted us. "I'm Alaric Saltzman. Saltzman is of German origin before my family migrated to Texas but I'm from Boston."
He had the accent to match. It was at that point, one thought crossed my mind. I really hoped that Damon wouldn't kill him too. I really hoped that Damon wouldn't kill anyone else.
"Now the name Alaric belonged to a very dead great grandfather that I haven't been able to thank enough. So you can call me Ric. I'm your new history teacher."
I would think that he would want us to call him Mr. Saltzman. I would try to think of him as that after utterly failing to do it with Kelsey. I realized that I should probably talk to her.
After class was over, he had an announcement.
"I'm going to need Jeremy Gilbert to see me at lunch." He said. I couldn't help but wonder why, but it might had had to do with the teen's grades.
During Theatre, I went over to Kelsey.
"So I was surprised not to see you in History this morning." I told her.
"I'm still surprised to see you at all." She declared. "So how are things going with you and Elena?"
"They're not." I replied. "She's chosen someone else and I'm going to accept it."
"I'm sorry." She apologized. "It's probably for the best."
"You probably like it that you don't have to teach a class that you're not qualified for any more." I remarked.
"I am definitely qualified." She argued. I probably shouldn't have been close to her but she was one of the few people who knew my secret and she was practically a teenager herself. Not to mention, she saved my life. I hadn't told Stefan that.
After school, I was finally alone with Rachel. We were about to talk before Elena came over to us.
"I really need to talk to you. Have you seen Stefan?" She asked. Come to think of it, I hadn't actually seen Stefan today. I was pretty sure that he was fine because I was pretty sure that Damon didn't want to kill him either.
"Yeah, he's right over there." Rachel remarked as I turned and looked at him. So he was. However, he had a serious look on his face. It wasn't much different from how his face usually looked, but it definitely seemed serious. The three of us walked over to him.
"Hey you weren't in class. I was worried." Elena greeted him. He didn't smile upon seeing her. That wasn't exactly a good sign.
"I wanted to say what I'm going to say in person." He said. This did not seem good.
"A simple 'I didn't kill my brother' text would have sufficed." Elena quipped. Something bad was about to happen and Stefan was going to be cause of it. I had a feeling he was going to break her heart;. I probably should not be the one to pick up the pieces.
"I didn't kill my brother. He has Brandy to thank for that." Stefan replied as Elena looked at me.
"So what did you want to talk about?" Elena asked. She didn't seem to think that anything was wrong.
"I'm not going to be coming to school anymore." Stefan said. What? I couldn't believe he was saying that to her. "I need to back off and keep my distance."
"Keep your distance from school or from me?" Elena asked. He didn't answer. I wanted to slap him. "Thank you for telling me."
"You're angry." He noted. "It would be better if you hated me.
I wanted to slap him harder now. What the fuck was he doing? Elena was okay with him being a vampire. The only reason that I could see for him possibly breaking up with her is if he found out that we slept together, but I didn't think he knew that. At that point, he walked away.
"I'll talk to him." I promised. "I'll get him to come to his senses."
I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to do that, but as I learned, I was able to use my cuteness to get people to do things. Hopefully he wasn't immune to it.
"If you can't talk to him, do you want to come over to my house tonight?" She asked.
"Elena, I don't know if we should do that right now." I said. We had already had bad timing the first time we had done it.
"I think she was asking both of us," Rachel remarked. At that I blushed.
"I was." Elena said, also blushing. "Caroline and Bonnie are already coming over and I wanted to know if you two wanted to join our slumber party."
"Oh yeah, we can do that." I answered before we left and went back to the boarding house. The first thing that I did was actually slap Stefan. "Are you out of your fucking mind? You're supposed to be telling Elena you love not breaking up with her. She chose you and you're not going to turn around and break up with her."
"What do you mean she chose me?" He asked. I tried to think of something, but before I could, my phone rang. It was Elena. Was there a change of plans?
"Hi." I answered.
"Can you bring Stefan over with you. There's something that I need to talk to him about." She said. "Damon has been talking to Bonnie."
"Sure." I replied before I looked at Stefan. "You are coming."
So Stefan ended up going with the two of us to her house. Bonnie and Caroline were inside, but apparently she wanted to talk outside.
"He threatened her." Elena said.
"Over a necklace?" Stefan asked in disbelief.
"Not a necklace." Rachel remarked. "It has to be a talisman. That's why Damon wants it. Th only question is what he wants it for. What does it look like?"
"It's got an amber crystal with a gold setting." Elena explained. "She said it belonged to her ancestor from the Civil War…when you lived here."
"Her name was Emily. She was Katherine's handmaiden." Stefan stated. I wondered if that was a codeword for slave. "And a witch."
"You know about Bonnie?" Elena asked.
"Ever since she touched me for the first time." I said.
"The necklace was Katherine's. Emily must have given it to her. I'll find out what Damon wants with it." Stefan declared. I felt like he shouldn't do that alone.
"I'll help." I offered. "Rachel, can you stay here with them?:"
"I guess so." She replied. She seemed like she would rather be there than hang out with Damon like I was going to.
The two of us headed to the Grill where we found Damon was sitting at the bar. I supposed it was the only place to get alcohol in town.
"So Stefan…" Stefan replied. I felt like I had missed something. "I think we should start over."
"I don't, Damon." Damon declared. Were there roleplaying as each other? Why were they doing that? "You kill everyone and you're so mean and you're so mean and…I give up. You're really hard to imitate."
"Can you not imitate me?" I asked. To be honest, I wasn't sure what his imitation would even be, but I did not want to find out. "Can I get a Pepsi?"
"So why the bottle?" Stefan asked. Because he's an alcoholic.
"I'm on edge from your diet." Damon declared. Why had he adopted Stefan's diet?
"Why are you on Stefan's diet?" I asked, echoing my thoughts.
"Because I like it on the edge and I do not need you two to babysit me." He said.
"Don't call it babysitting, call it spending some quality time together as a family." I replied.
The two of them started to play darts while I kept score. I was more of a fan of contact sports, even though I had occasionally played the Pokémon Trading Card Game.
"You're beating me." Damon noted.
"That's because I'm better than you." Stefan declared confidently.
"What's with this sudden cocky attitude?" Damon asked. "And I think you're cheating."
"Were you prefer it if I was all broody?" Stefan asked. Why would someone cheat at darts? What do you have to gain from it? "And I'm not cheating. I've just honed this skill for many, many years."
"You two are up to something." Damon declared. I hoped that we weren't being too obvious. "What are you planning?"
"You know I have been asking you the same question since you got here." Stefan pointed out. "It seems like the shoe is on the other foot now."
I looked around the restaurant a little and noticed that Jeremy was there with Jenna and also Mr. Saltzman was there by himself. You know I would have to stop being attracted to my teachers, but I probably wouldn't be ready for anything considering that things were complicated with Elena right now.
From there, we headed to the school. Damon managed to steal a football and we headed out to the field. Normally, the team would be there on a Friday night, but with no coach, that wasn't happening. I could believe that the football team only had one coach. I knew that they probably couldn't afford to have a whole coaching staff like with NFL teams, but you would think that there would be at least one assistant coach, maybe a coordinator of some kind or something.
"Looks like you forgot your uniform." Damon told me. It would not make sense for me to be wearing that on a cold night like tonight, even if my current outfit wasn't that much better.
"Fuck that. I'm playing with you two." I declared as I swiped the ball from him.
"I'm the one who taught Stefan everything that he knows about this game." Damon boasted. Stefan probably would have learned to play sooner or later.
"I didn't say that I cared about that. Just go long." I ordered. I leaned my arm back and threw it. Damon went to catch it before he tackled hard by Stefan. As both of them laid on the ground, I went over and picked it up and ran it into the endzone because if someone catches the ball and it comes out, it's a fumble, unless it's in the endzone at which point it's a touchdown. I then headed back over to the them because there was no one to see me do a touchdown dance. I wasn't about to lay next to them though because I did not want to get dirt or grass in my hair.
"Fuck that hurt." Damon declared.
"That's the thing about drinking animal blood." Stefan said. "Everything hurts more."
I decided that I would at least take a seat next to the two of them. I had to say that the sky looked pretty beautiful right now. It was a view that I would rarely be able to see in New York because there were so many tall buildings. Sure I could to go the top of the tallest building, but that wasn't worth it most of them…and I was supposed to be banned from the Empire State Building. I don't want to talk about what lead to that happening.
"So you two have really outdone yourselves with a night of booze, football and now the stars." Damon stated. He was the only one who had any booze because they had a new bartender and I would be surprised if they put this one on vervain. "What do you want?"
"Our love for Katherine wasn't real." Stefan replied. What did that have to do with the crystal? It was completely irrelevant to the situation. "She compelled us."
"We are not doing this tonight, Stefan." Damon remarked as he started to walk away. I decided that it would be a good idea to just get to the point like Stefan should have done.
"What do you want with her crystal?" I questioned. That got him to stop in his tracks. It was exactly why Stefan should led with it.
"How did you know about that?" He asked.
"Come on. You had to know Bonnie would tell Elena and she would tell us." Stefan replied.
"I mean how did you know it was Katherine's?" Damon corrected before he turned to me. "Emily gave it to her on her last night. I was with her but Stefan wasn't."
"I was the last person to see her." Stefan said. "So what do you want with it?"
"Didn't she tell you?" He questioned.
"She had other ideas than that." Stefan replied. You know having sex with someone while they were under compulsion seemed like a lack of consent. Damon doing that to Caroline was probably worse than any of the killings that he had done. It was why I had never done it. Well there was that and I wanted to be confident in my ability to get someone in bed without forcing them to do it. I had compelled a few people afterwards though.
"I could rip your heart out." Damon threatened. I stood in front of him because I wasn't sure if he was being serious or not.
"I doubt that." Stefan replied. Damon started to walk away again before he turned to face us.
"I have an even bigger surprise." He remarked. "I'm going to bring her back."
"How?" I asked. Rachel said that you couldn't just use magic to bring someone back to life. I knew because I asked if she could do it to bring my dad back. Okay, it was possible but it usually required more magic than a witch's body could handle.
"Well the townspeople were already killing vampires left and right, so I knew it would only be a matter of time before they found out about her." Damon explained. 'So I went to Emily and she cast a spell to protect her."
"How did she do that?" Stefan asked. Also, if she wasn't dead, where was she?
"She created a tomb underneath the church." Damon responded. That was interesting. Why not just use a simple protection spell? "She was in there while we thought she was burning in the church."
"How did you convince Emily to do that?" Stefan asked. If she was Katherine's slave, she probably didn't like Katherine that much. "Why would she help you?"
"Because she knew that they would come for her too." Damon answered. Ah, it was a quid pro quo. "I vowed to keep her lineage alive."
"You saved her children but I never could figure out why." Stefan replied. How old was Emily anyway?
"It's the only thing preventing me from ripping out that Bonnie girl's throat to get my crystal back." Damon said. "Oh I guess a deal is a deal."
I couldn't believe he was honoring the deal. Though, if it was a magical deal, he would be forced to unless the witch failed to live up to her end of the bargain.
At that point, my phone rang. Stefan's phone also rang at the exact same time.
"Hello?" I answered.
"We have a serious problem." Rachel told me. "Caroline had the bright idea to do a séance and now Emily is possessing Bonnie."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because she's a lot stronger. She locked us in the house with magic. She said that she was going back to where it all began and that it must be destroyed."
I tried to think about what she could possibly mean as I noticed that Damon had run off. He had apparently figured it out before I had. I then realized that it was related to the story that Damon had told us.
"I have to go save Bonnie and/or Damon." I declared before I hung up. I then ran off. Stefan seemed to be going with me. Under a normal situation, I would try to race him but it was definitely not a normal situation and I was worried about Damon.
When we got there, we found him impaled as on a tree branch as Bonnie/Emily stood on the ground. She seemed to be drawing a circle.
"Hello, Emily." Stefan greeted her.
"Stefan." She replied. Did Emily look like Bonnie. It seemed pretty wrong to possess her like that.
"These people don't deserve this." Emily said as I got Damon off the branches. "They shouldn't have to know such evil."
"Emily, I swear to God that I'm going to make you regret this." Damon told her.
"I'm not going to unleash them." Emily replied. Well it looked like it was more than Katherine in the tomb.
"Them?" Stefan asked in surprise. Did he really not figure that out?
"In order to save her, I had to save all of them." Emily explained.
"I don't care about them. I just want Katherine." Damon declared as he got up.
"Damon, this isn't about love, is it? It's about revenge." Stefan replied. It sounded like it was about love to me. It's not like the vampires would just be able to walk out.
"It's both." Damon remarked.
"Damon, you can't do this.' Stefan said.
"Why not?" Damon challenged. "They killed 27 people and called it a war battle. They deserve whatever they get."
"You can't blame innocent people for what their ancestors did." Stefan argued.
"They are not innocent. Do you think Logan was innocent when he shot you?" Damon asked before he looked at Emily. "And don't think that they won't kill your little grandwitch where they killed you."
"I won't." Emily replied before she formed a circle of fire around herself.
"Please don't do this." Damon begged.
"Incidia." Emily shouted as she threw the necklace into the air.
"Bonnie." Elena replied as Rachel held her back. At that point, the necklace exploded and then I noticed a blank look on the witch's face. She looked very confused.
However, it didn't last long because Damon lunged over and bit into her neck. I went over just as fast as threw him off as Elena came over.
"She's still alive. I can save her." I remarked as I fed my blood into her mouth and got her to swallow.
"It's healing." Elena said. She didn't need to point out the obvious.
I then went over to Damon and found him sitting on a stump looking rather glum, possibly even heartbroken. Whatever he was feeling, he looked really sad.
"Katherine never compelled me. I knew everything." He stated. "It was real for me and I really loved her. I'll leave now."
I then went over to Stefan, Elena, and Rachel. Bonnie was in the car. I would have to find a way to convince him to stay later.
"Is she in danger of becoming a vampire?" Elena asked.
"Not unless she dies." Rachel remarked. "You should probably keep an eye on her."
"I'm gonna tell her everything." Elena replied. I hoped that she would keep one secret because I didn't want her to know that.
"Okay." Stefan agreed.
"Stefan, you never let me say what I wanted to say earlier." Elena remarked. "I don't want you to back off. I want you to come closer. I don't care that you're a vampire. I'm okay with it. I can do this. I love you, Stefan."
You know that actually hurt. I knew that she wasn't trying to, at least I didn't think she was, but hearing her say that she loved someone else hurt. I could only wait to see what Stefan was going to say in response, but I imagined he was going to say he loved her too.
"I can't." Stefan said. What? "Too many people have gotten hurt and died. It's time for me to leave."
Wouldn't those problems go away if Damon left?
"Stefan, please don't go." Elena begged through her tears. He ran off and I was left with Elena. "Please tell me you're not leaving too."
"Rachel and I are staying." I assured her. She then grabbed onto me and hugged me and I hugged her back but then she tried to kiss me and I backed away. I wasn't going to do it like that especially since I had to convince the two of them to stay.
"Elena, I'm not going to be your second choice." I declared. "I get that you're hurting right now, but you need to get through it. I probably shouldn't sleep over tonight. I can promise you that I'll find a way to get Stefan to stay."
So it's an update. Brandy got to spend some family time with Stefan and Damon. Also, Alaric is played by John Krasinki. How is Brandy going to convince her almost siblings to stay. Please don't forget to review.