a/n: as you read remember that ily and ur not allowed to fight the author until the end of the story, as proclaimed by me
as always my socials are in my profile, and i hope you enjoy my story! also reviews fuel me to write faster !
CHAPTER THREE: GROWING PAINS
The lightning gave her shorts glimpses of him through the darkness and relentless rain. After a long, and bated breath she moved, her hand reaching out in a silent invitation.
She thought maybe he would leave her alone to wallow, or that she was dealing with the repercussions of having memories from another life and hallucinating.
The feline slowly walked over until his wet fur brushed against her fingertips; her fingers automatically scratched near his ears, just the way he used to like it.
She nearly sobbed at the reassuring and very real weight that pressed against her stomach. Her tears would have spilled if not for the surge of magic that now surrounded them, it felt as warm as it did suffocating.
Nova could hardly bring herself to think anymore, not on the why's and how's. So instead, she sat there, with Merlin on her lap, patting his wet fur until the magic gradually receded and she could breathe again.
She cradled him as though her sanity depended on it, feeling hopeless and adrift.
She could hear sirens passing by, and froze when the sound triggered a final blurry blue-tinted vision.
Mr. Gilbert waved off Stefan and gestured insistently towards his daughter instead. An eerie feeling of deja vu took hold of her, yet she was forced to watch helplessly.
She didn't want to look. She tried to fight against the magic of her vision, and when that failed, she tried to close her eyes, nevertheless, her cruel vision kept them wide open.
She felt so cold and numb as she watched it all unfold.
When the hold of her vision finally, finally let her go, that's when she let her tears fall.
Nova's not a pretty crier, she knows, it's always scrunched up faces, snotty noses, hiccups, and sometimes even a bit of drool. The rain didn't help any, with her shivering and thoroughly drowned clothes.
Stefan finds her again like this, crying, shivering, and curled around Merlin to protect him from the weather.
He approached her slowly like she was a wounded animal getting ready to attack, but she was barely aware of what was happening around her. He sat down next to her, his shoulder brushing against hers, as though to alert her to his presence.
"I'm sorry, I wasn't able to save them all, only her."
The regretful words that came out of his mouth only served to make her angry, she wasn't sure if it was directed at him or herself.
Nova wanted to crawl into the depths of the earth and never come out. She wanted to cry more. Or scream, but all her energy had been spent.
He said something else but she didn't reply, her eyes were too heavy, so much so she ended up drifting off out of pure exhaustion.
Fuck this fucking universe.
Her entire body felt sore, including her throat. She felt as though a goddamn truck had run over her, and then backed up over her body. Twice. And when she tentatively rolled over, she noticed she was decidedly not in her lumpy bed with her oversized pillows.
Okay then, she thought, trying to swallow down any panic, it wasn't her first time getting drunk or sleep-deprived enough to wake up at a friend's place. But, still, for a moment, she couldn't remember what she had done last night to get her so fucked up.
Let's see, aha! There had been a game last night, she had put on too much glitter on her face, gotten tipsy at the after-party, and then —
Nova bolted up when sunlight hit her eyes, her eyes now wide open when she remembered.
Elena's parents were fucking dead and she had … she had just watched them die. She had been useless. She pulled her fingers through her hair, tugging gently on the ends until her breathing evened out.
She could cry again later.
Right now, she had to figure out where the fuck she was.
She sighed in relief when she pulled the tucked-in covers off her and noticed that her cheer outfit was still on her body, just as ruined as it had been last night. Her lips turned up slightly at the sight of overzealous bandaids on her knees and elbows.
Taking a short look around the room told her all she needed to know, she was at the Salvatore Boarding house, probably in a guest room or maybe even Stefan's room.
But no matter where her eyes went, she didn't see anyone with her, not even Merlin.
The absence of the black feline hurt her more than any pain in her body, but there was something inside of her that said it wouldn't be the last she saw of him.
She reminded herself once again that she could freak out later when she was alone where people didn't have super hearing.
Stefan Salvatore had already seen her cry way too many times already, and that was for level forty friends only.
Getting up was even harder than she thought it would be, a new wave of pain hit her from her spine down to her toes. She felt like shit as she forced her body to stretch, her bones cracking like a glow stick as she did so. She quickly stopped when her knees wobbled and her ankles started giving her hell.
Nova spotted her phone on the desk and perked up enough to hobble to her bedazzled flip phone that she refused to ever get rid of. She tried to turn the silver and pink thing on, but the bastard flashed her with its blue glow before declaring low battery and powering off.
Nova sighed, catching a glance - okay, fine, snooping through the desk and finding a picture of Katherine. The very second her fingers brushed against the picture, her eyes glazed over and shivers rolled down her spine.
Oh great, here we go again.
"Please, call me Katherine," Katherine said, smiling charmingly as she curtsied to a young and smitten Stefan.
Her vision blurred as it quickly changed. It was still Katherine, but interestingly enough she was wearing modern clothes. She didn't get the chance to see much of anything except her, entering a beautiful house, before the vision let her go.
Nova sighed in relief, even as she wondered if that last vision had been the past, future, or present. Having seen enough of seeing the evil doppelgänger of her friend, she carefully tucked the picture back underneath the journal she didn't have the heart to snoop through.
She was honestly surprised that she hadn't gotten caught yet — weren't vampires supposed to have super hearing? — so she forced herself to move out of the room and into the frying pan.
She looked around the place, quietly peeping into every open door. All she found was expensive, yet boring decor, all of them empty of any capricious Salvatore.
She painstakingly made her way down the stairs, the cold wood creaking underneath her feet with each slow and careful step.
Nova blanched when she caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of a silver tray, gently tipping the unnecessary decoration bullshit off the tray, she held it — and good fucking christ.
Her hair was a curly mess that resembled a bird's nest, her eyes were bloodshot, and mascara and glitter were in places that there shouldn't be. She was just thankful she hadn't worn lipstick.
She flinched when she heard the front door closed, and hurriedly set down the tray to try and at least fix her hair.
"I don't understand, Uncle Stefan, I thought you said you weren't staying for long, and now you're bringing home one of Sheila Bennett's granddaughter?" Someone, probably Mack? Zach?, said.
"After what happened last night… I can't leave Mystic Falls until I know what's going on, who she is, and why she —" Their conversation was cut short when her phone slipped from her bra and out of her crop top.
Ah, damnit things were just getting interesting too. Though, if she had to take a wild stab in the dark, she supposed the 'she' in question, probably wasn't her, but Elena.
By the time she picked her phone up and stood up again, she was face to face with not one but two Salvatores.
"Sup," she said in greeting, wincing when she heard her voice. It sounded like it had been in the blender.
"Either of you knuckleheads got a charger for this thing?" She continued when neither of them said anything, waving her phone around.
Which like, maybe she hadn't given them time to reply but, whatever.
"Yeah, uh, I - I'll get it," Zach replied, and then he just took her phone and left, which wow, and she thought she was bad with people.
Did she smell or something?
"I was worried you caught a fever, so I got some things, but you look better than last night," Stefan said, y'know, like a liar.
She noticed the grocery bags in his hands, and the sight was a sharp reminder that she had skipped dinner and lunch yesterday.
"Liar, I look horrible," she called him out, holding her stomach when it made embarrassing noises.
"Ah, well, I did say better than last night," He replied, his tone dry.
She clutched at her chest with a deep gasp, her theatrics gaining her an amused glance. He soon left her to tend to her wounds, quickly recovering from that brutal response, she followed him into the room, her eyes roaming over the beautiful kitchen.
Nova stood near the island, watching him for a moment because well, this was bizarre, to say the least. It was different, with everyone else in town. She had grown up with them for years and had known them for years before she had gained memories of a past life where they were fictional characters.
Stefan was a whole other entity, it was kind of like meeting a celebrity, like Beyoncé, or Bigfoot. He was fucking Bigfoot.
"There are clean clothes in the room I left you in. You can take a shower if you want, while I make breakfast." Stefan said, unnervingly calm as he pulled the grocery out of the bags.
Okay so, she knew why she was relatively calm, she knew him or at least parts of him. He on the other hand was acting as though she was a long-time friend, instead of the witch who he had bumped into in the middle of the fucking forest.
"Can I at least get your name, before I go use all of your hot water?" Nova joked, just so she wouldn't slip and call him by his first name.
Sure she could blame it on being a seer, but she had to be smart, smarter, and more steps ahead of beings hundreds of years older than her.
… she might be getting a little cocky, but it probably wouldn't be too hard considering the dumb choices they all made.
"Stefan Salvatore," he replied, putting down a carton of eggs to offer her a hand.
Nova looked at it like it was a foreign object, it was just.. after everything that had happened last night, a handshake seemed too formal. She needed a fucking hug and as Merlin had left her to her devices, it was either him or his even more emotionally constipated family member. And so she chose to attach herself to him like an octopus.
Thankfully he didn't shove her away or like, try to bite her neck, and even returned the hug.
The dude gave surprisingly great hugs, her previously cold body felt warm and comforted tucked underneath his chin and he smelt amazing, like cypress and fresh linen. She wanted to cry from the comfort it gave her, and what the fuck, she was officially jealous of Elena —
The very thought of her best friend made her jolt away from him.
"Is Elena…the girl you saved, is she okay?" She asked with tears in her eyes and felt stupid because of fucking course she wasn't okay.
Her parents were fucking dead and she had almost died with them.
Stefan's eyes seemed to grow distant, as he thought about the girl who looked exactly like the person who had turned him.
"I checked on her earlier. She's still in the hospital. Her blood oxygen levels are going back to normal though, they should be releasing her tomorrow." Stefan replied, looking at her with those stupidly concerned and curious eyes.
He wanted answers.
She wanted to go back to sleep.
They were two different people.
"Okay. Cool, thanks for the hug, I'm gonna go shower," she said, giving him finger guns which just made him even more concerned.
Comforting hugs or not she was not 'bout to cry in front of a virtual stranger, let alone a Salvatore.
"You never told me your name, by the way, but I'm assuming you're a Bennett witch," Stefan said before she could make her escape.
"Why would you assume that?" Nova questioned, eyes narrowed.
"You're phone charm, it has the name Bennett on it. You sent me images of a drowning girl. I took a wild guess." Stefan said, his tone dryer than ever.
What a sassy jerk.
"Nova Bennett, my name's Nova."
Nova had thought to skip the shower, and just use some fancy mouthwash and deodorant and call it a day. Let's face it, showering in a stranger's house was weird. And showering in The Stefan Salvatore's shower felt even weirder, but she felt like shit and smelt even worse, so she sucked it up.
She found clean towels and a new bar of soap through her careful snooping and then braved herself for getting into the hot shower.
It had amazing water pressure that relaxed her enough until she no longer felt awkward.
Nova stuck her head underneath the water, watching as dirt, blood, and glitter went down the drain as she scrubbed herself head from toe.
She eventually let her mind wander and, okay, bad idea.
Nova held both hands on her mouth, trying so very hard to stuff the ugliness of her sobs down her throat, determined not to cry here. She was sick of her own goddamn tears.
She was no stranger to death, a version of herself had died and continued to do so in her dreams at night. All the same, she knew that the vision of life slipping away from their eyes would haunt her just as her death did.
She got out as soon as her eyes stopped betraying her by leaking, burning tears.
The shower, though it had succeeded in making her body clean, she still felt like her body along with her battered heart had been put into a washer machine.
She picked up the clothes left on the bed that she had failed to notice the first time and noticed with growing horror that they were women's clothes. She briefly thought they were some dead woman's clothes or worse, a fling's clothes. Expect there were tags still on them.
Huh, that was kind of sweet.
She suddenly felt even less guilty for using the rest of the conditioner when she took a look at the price on the tags.
Nova was however relieved that they weren't a perfect fit, the sweatpants a little too snug in the waist and the t-shirt a little too big. They were warmer and cleaner than her cheer uniform that she stuffed into a nearby trashcan.
…It would be more of a bitch to replace than repair, so she pulled it out of the trash and instead scrubbed at the stains with hydrogen peroxide and the bar of soap. Her hands were red and tender as her heart by the time she finished and left the bathroom to let it dry.
She tried to hold off going downstairs for as long as possible, as social interaction via an interrogation was the last thing on her mind at the moment; eventually, the smell of food lured her downstairs.
She ran her fingers through her curly hair and tied it back into a low bun, just so she wouldn't have to deal with the mess it would make when it dried without her hair taming products.
She walked into the kitchen quietly, and any hesitance fucked off when she saw coffee and food on the table.
Nova said thank you quietly when a plate was set in front of her, and she didn't know half of what was on the table, but she was in love at first bite.
Was it too late to seduce and propose to Stefan, she questioned, shoving a croissant into her mouth with a pleased hum.
Eh, she was too busy and unmotivated to seduce anyone.
Maybe she could get Zach to adopt her? Having some random white dude as her dad was almost too great a sacrifice, but like.. this food.
Nova drank her orange juice happily, yet she couldn't help but eye the cup of coffee that said white man was holding in his hands, untouched. She must've made a face because the next thing she knew, he was pushing it towards her in a silent offering.
Yeah, they would get along just fine.
She poured more sugar and creamer into the cup until she was happy, and both Salvatores were looking at her in concern for her health.
Blackmail was an option too, she mused, plotting all the ways she could blackmail Stefan into cooking for her. Her soft giggle gained her even more concerned looks. She ignored them all in favor of inhaling the sweet and warm drink.
Zach handed her phone back with a cough when it looked like she was finished eating her weight in crepes.
"Thanks," she said and regretted speaking when the assholes took it as an invitation to start talking to her instead of letting her call her family to let them know she wasn't dead.
"You were pretty out of it last night, do you remember anything? Like why you were out in the middle of the woods so late last night?" Stefan asked, trying to remain as casual in his interrogation as he could.
"Shortcut to the Wickery Bridge. I was trying to keep a vision of my best friend and her parents drowning from actually happening," she said, aggressively biting into the last piece of bacon.
Though all her plans to do that had failed spectacularly, she thought bitterly.
"And you saw that? The Gilberts dying? In your head?" Zach asked, sounding skeptical of seers of all things.
Jesus fucking Christ, the tact on this one was astounding. Someone needed to get out of his hobbit-hole more.
"You live with your vampire relative, who you call uncle, who looks younger than you, and me being able to see the future is where you draw the line?" Nova scoffed, drinking the rest of her coffee in one go — damn that's the good shit.
Maybe they would let her take some coffee beans home with her?
Stefan opened his mouth to say something, only he was interrupted by Zach questioning her again. Even he looked done with his relative, as he gave her a somewhat sympathetic glance.
"How did you know he was a vampire anyway?"
And y'know what, she takes back the whole — they would get along just fine, thing. Screw him.
"Well, if you really wanna know, Zach-attackary. Most witches have a sixth sense when it comes to vampires. Some call it high intuition, I call it fucking survival instincts." She told him, hoping her heated glare would deter him from asking any more questions.
It didn't, he opened his dumb Salvatore mouth to say something else. She swore at the moment, that if something stupid came out she would spell it shut.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry that I wasn't able to save them all." Stefan interrupted, but the empathy in his eyes was worse than the interrogation.
She glared at him too, the sudden tears in her eyes betraying her; it wasn't like she could bring herself to blame anyone but herself, so she shrugged.
"You tried, guess there was just no way to save them," Nova whispered, mostly to herself. Her morbid words gained her a worried glance between her two interrogators.
They had more questions, she was sure of that, but like hell was she going to answer them right now. She was quick to turn her phone on, bracing herself for the massive number of missing calls.
Most of them were from Bonnie, Caroline, Grams, but there were a few from her dad too.
The phone rang again before she could think of who to call first.
Nova ignored the whispered conversation going on between Pretty Jerk and the Hermit and answered it.
"Hey, wassup," she greeted in faux cheer and regretted it immediately after, it was just so not the time.
Bonnie let out a breath of relief at the sound of her voice, before agreeing with her silent assessment. "What's up with me? What's up with you? Where have you been? I was seconds away from using a tracking spell to find you."
Properly chastised, she rested her head into her elbow to hide the utterly exhausted look on her face.
"I am so sorry, Bon. I had too much to drink last night and woke up at a friend's place." Nova apologized, and really it wasn't a lie, just not the complete truth.
She would eventually gather the courage to tell her the complete truth, but she really would rather it not be when she was being watched.
"..Okay, it's okay. I just.. need you, you need to come home. There's something I have to tell you."
Days turn into weeks, and sooner than she would like, she was staring at the tombstones of Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert.
It was some sick irony that it rained on the day of their deaths, and nearly every day after, and yet it was fucking sunny on their funeral.
The burial had been suffocating to bear witness to, the heat was unbearable on her to the point of nausea, and the sound of crying all around her only furthered her own grief and guilt.
Nova kept her arms looped through her sister's and Caroline's, partly to keep herself from making a scene and running away from the very sight of the fresh graves. Most had already left or were leaving, those that stayed were or close friends of the family.
The three girls stared at the backs of Elena, Jenna, and Jeremy, who were speaking in hushed tones and staring at the two fresh headstones. John had fucked off ages ago, lucky bastard.
Jeremy broke the mournful silence by doing what she wanted to do and running away. She sighed as she watched him go, while Bonnie and Caroline automatically moved to keep the remaining family company. She hesitated to join them, staring in the direction Jeremy had gone off to.
"Where are you going?" Caroline quietly asked, gently tugging on her fingertips before she could let go completely.
"I'm gonna make sure Mr. My Chemical Romance doesn't get eaten by bears," Nova replied, ignoring the exasperated look on her sister's face as she left.
Walking around in heels through the muddy ground was a Very Bad, No Good Idea, but it wasn't like she had planned on trekking through the woods again, in heels no less. She didn't make it very far before she came face to face with her new favorite chef, decked out in all black and shades that almost hid his entire face.
Almost.
"Stalker," she said offhandedly, focusing on tracking what she hoped was Jeremy's footprints.
"Those are footprints from a herd of deer. He went that way," Stefan said, pointing in the opposite direction of where she had been going.
"Oh, well that's fucking embarrassing. Thank you, Edward," she said, smiling at the frown on his face at his new nickname. She ditched her high heels to stomp after bigger footprints that did indeed look more human.
Whoops.
Nova sighed in relief when she fucking finally finds him sitting on a fallen tree, his quiet sobs making his shoulders shake. She kind of wanted to run away. Which yes, was a bitch thing to do, he had just lost his parents. It was just… could she really handle comforting him, without breaking down herself?
She turned on her feet to maybe go back, and find someone more capable like her sister or her grandmother —
"Fucking shit!" She cursed, hopping in one place when she stepped on a giant ass splinter, no, a tree — a tree had planted its way into her foot. Her venomous curses caught Jeremy's attention.
"What the hell are you doing out here?" Jeremy asked, roughly wiping his face and moving to help her hop onto the tree stump he had been sitting on.
"Oh, you know, just out for a stroll." She put on a brave face as Jeremy started to remove the splinters. She couldn't help but let out even more filthy curse words — some even managed to startle the grieving boy.
"Right."
"Okay, so maybe the barefoot part was a bad idea, but I couldn't just let you go out into the woods alone. There's a massive herd of deer lurking somewhere, just waiting to strike."
He huffed, his mouth turning up in what could've been a smile, it was gone too fast for her to be able to tell. Things became unbearably silent for a moment, and she didn't know what to say but she figured should say something.
"For what it's worth, I'm so sorry, Jer," Nova said, her voice cracking and tripping over the words as her guilt ate her up from the inside out.
Jeremy, who had probably heard this all day, tried to shrug off her words. Unlike all the other pitying words he had heard today, something caught him off guard. Perhaps it was her ridiculous heart stitched onto her sleeve because the next thing she knew he was crying again.
There was no joke on the tip of her tongue, there was nothing that she could say to make things better. So she didn't say anything else, she sat still as his tears soaked her dress, until the last of the sunlight melted away.