Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time it happened, Nora was ten.

It had begun long before that—Nora had always been odd, something people quietly (or loudly) chalked up to being the daughter of a teen druggie, but even fetal drug ingestion couldn’t account for Nora’s propensity to know things she shouldn’t.

Five year olds, after all, were not supposed to read untranslated copies of the Iliad aloud at bedtime. Nor were they supposed to mix up the normal alphabet with a surprisingly accurate rendition of Younger Futhark runes.

Nora was not supposed to know that Sheila Bennett was a witch, or that her father hunted vampires, or even that such things existed.

She was most definitely not supposed to know that Grayson Gilbert, beloved town doctor and PTA dad extraordinaire, smelled wrong.

It was because of Grayson Gilbert’s wrong smell that Nora got separated from her tour group. She had remained at the edge of Mystic Falls Elementary’s cluster of fifth graders in order to avoid him, even as their class wound through the busy streets of the nation’s capital.

One moment, she was admiring the cherry blossoms on her field trip, and the next, Nora had been bustled into by no less than four busy-looking young men in ill-fitting suits and cheap shoes, and landed in a heap of grazed palms and bruised knees at the edge of the sidewalk.

None of the men apologized. They simply rushed on, crossing the next intersection at a run. Nora looked back towards her class, only to find the group vanished. Not a single clue remained to inform her where they had gone off to. She was alone.

Nora felt a hot tear carve a path down her face. `She blinked furiously, attempting to stop any more from following. Being knocked over was humiliating enough, but crying about it? Jeremy Gilbert would find out and tell his sister, and Elena would never let her forget it.

Nora was attempting to brush the tiny pieces of gravel from her bloody palms when she felt a large, cool hand envelop hers. A handkerchief entered her line of sight. Nora sighed, looking up to see who had witnessed her humiliation.

Bright blue eyes, eyes that haunted Nora from her own reflection, gazed back at her. She knew this man. Before she had even processed it, the name fell from her lips.

”Niklaus.”

And in a moment, Nora was somewhere else. The crisp spring air of Washington, D.C. was gone entirely, 18th century architecture replaced by thatch-roofed huts, streets by a thick, age-old forest. Gone was the scent of the Potomac and cherry-blossom perfume, instead Nora breathed in the woods and the heady scent of various herbs.

Even her clothes were different. Nora looked down at the unevenly stitched, roughspun dress that hung over her frame. Despite the weave, it felt smooth and light. She ran her fingers over the bodice. It was flax linen, a fabric her stepmother Carol paid hundreds for.

Oddly, despite the displacement, Nora felt at peace. She smiled, feeling the sunshine on her skin. From the corner of her eye, she spotted movement.

There!

Nora chased the movement through the forest, gulping in the clean, sweet air as she ran faster and faster. She wasn’t sure what she was following, but she caught glimpses of it every few steps.

It was large, and fast, and furry. Nora, despite being small and not very furry at all, would be faster. She ran and ran and ran, chasing the figure through the trees and shrubs, until she saw an opening before her.

Nora pulled her body to a stop before a familiar waterfall. Rocks, displaced by her movements, flew over the cliff's edge and crackled as her hometown’s eponymous falls crashed over them.

Nora swallowed. That could have been her.

A soft yip pulled Nora’s attention from the waterfall. There, laying along the edge of the cliff, was a massive wolf.

The animal laid its head on its paws, watching her from below. Nora felt drawn to it, even as nerves settled in her chest. After all, she had chased the wolf all the way here.

Nora walked to the wolf and lowered herself by its side. It showed no sign of aggression, merely letting its tongue loll out of its mouth. Nora found herself wrapping a paw in its fur, and closed her eyes at the soft, thick, luxurious feeling.

She opened her eyes to fluorescent lights.

Nora was lying on her back in a hospital bed. She panicked, realizing her clothes were gone. She couldn’t even feel underwear beneath the pink hospital gown she saw someone had put her in.

Nora looked around desperately. The monitors surrounding her were largely meaningless, as they did nothing to inform the ten-year-old on how to retrieve her dignity. She settled for wrapping the bed’s thin blanket over her back like a cape and curling up into it when the door to her room opened.

A tall nurse with a brown ponytail walked in.

“I thought that was you waking up,” she said with a brilliantly white smile. “Your family just got here. They’re just having a chat with the doctor, but they’ll be in in just a minute.”

Nora was confused.

“What happened?”

“Well,” the nurse pulled a chart from the end of Nora’s bed, “it looks like you had a seizure. The man who found you said you had fallen right before that, but we couldn’t find a head injury, so we’re going to want to try to figure out what happened, but that should just take a few more tests. You’ll be out of here in no time!”

She punctuated her speech with another blinding grin.

“Um,” Nora tried to process this information, “where is here, exactly?”

“Oh! Right.” The nurse looked genuinely ashamed of herself. “You’re at Walter Reed, in D.C. Do you remember coming here?”

Nora thought. She remembered the field trip, but definitely not arriving at the hospital. She wasn’t sure which the nurse was asking about.

Luckily, she was prevented from asking that embarrassing question by the door to her room opening once again. This time, her whole family piled through the door, escorted by Grayson Gilbert, who had changed into a white coat.

Nora shivered. Dr. Gilbert, nice as he was, still smelt wrong.

Richard Lockwood, her father, approached the bed. Even all of these years later, he still intimidated Nora, but there was no sign of anger towards her in his eyes now. Nora relaxed a bit, letting her feet poke out of her blanket cocoon.

Carol Lockwood followed right after her husband, her hair still pulled back in a messy ponytail. Nora was touched. She had never seen the town’s first lady look this imperfect before; she had clearly rushed to her straight from gardening.

Mason, Nora’s uncle, had an arm firmly wrapped around her brother Tyler’s shoulders. She could see the vice grip the blond teen had on the younger boy’s upper arm as he stopped Tyler from pushing his parents aside to get to her.

“How are you feeling?” Richard’s voice was surprisingly soft. Usually, he left Carol to do anything emotional or nurturing.

“Confused,” Nora admitted, “but alright. I don’t even have a headache.”

Carol reached out to cup Nora’s cheek, stroking it with her thumb.

“We’re all so glad you’re okay,” her soft but firm voice filled up the room.

“Luckily, since Dr. Gilbert here has admitting privileges,” she continued, “You’ll be able to get out of here quickly. Just one more CT scan, right?”

Said doctor nodded. His warm, hazel eyes—Jeremy’s eyes—fixed on her.

“As soon as that gets done, you can head home with your parents. We can do follow-ups at my clinic.”

Nora tried very hard not to grimace at that prospect.

From there, things went quickly. Nora was wheeled down to the scan by the still-unnamed nurse, escorted back to the room half-asleep from the droning, whirring machine, and released to go home within a few hours. Carol, luckily, had brought her clothing (including underwear!) to change into for the ride home, and Nora soon found herself tucked between Tyler and Mason in the backseat of her father’s SUV, lulled into a trance by Tyler’s breathless chattering as he caught everyone up on the day’s gossip.

“So then, Mrs. Gilbert had to come to escort the whole class back, and she started just tearing into Ms, Donner and Dr. Gilbert, and Jeremy looked like he was gonna cry...” The overexcited 12-year-old went on and on.

A sudden thought struck Nora.

“What about that guy? The one who found me?” She pointed her question more at Carol, who was an expert networker.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Michaels. Such a nice young man.” Her stepmother rummaged through her purse. “I did get his card—he’s actually from London, that might be hard to send flowers—but you’re more than welcome to reach out, dear.”

Nora knew what answer Carol wanted.

“I’ll send him a thank you card.”

Carol turned back from the passenger seat to smile her approval. Nora shared the smile, though for different reasons.

She finally had a lead.

Chapter Text

Nora’s father was dead, and Nora felt cold.

It wasn’t supposed to happen. One minute, he had been telling her and Tyler that they couldn’t stay at the Founder’s Day Celebration, and the next, the Lockwood siblings were sitting in the hospital, hearing that their father had been burnt to death in Dr. Gilbert’s old medical building.

Tyler hadn’t cried. Nora’s tears were born more of frustration and fear than true grief. It always came down to the Gilberts, didn’t it?

After all, the Gilbert parents had been the first in a rash of recent deaths when their car drove off Wickery bridge in March. Then campers started to go missing, and not long after that, the council got involved.

Logan Fell may not have been Nora’s favorite uncle, but unlike Mason, he’d stuck around. Logan had endured all of the talk that came with pursuing a relationship with his sister’s bastard child in order to take her to Sunday mass and to kickboxing, and he hadn’t deserved to die with a stake through his heart next to a pile of bloodless corpses.

And now Richard Lockwood was dead. Yesterday, he had told her that everything would end and that he’d meet them all at home, and today his corpse was sitting in the morgue.

That left Tyler—Tyler, whose girlfriend had gone missing only months ago—as the man of the house. Thankfully, Carol would functionally remain head of the family.

Tyler had excused Nora from standing with him at the door as he welcomed the town into their home to mourn. Nora was grateful to escape into the kitchen—she found herself organizing endless casserole dishes and funeral pies, sorting a few away into the fridge before trying to find enough serving utensils for the rest. Luckily, no one had lingered near her long enough to do much more than set a plate down with a sympathetic smile. Nora didn’t want to interact.

She had just returned from placing the last of the food out in the dining room when she saw Elena Gilbert leaning casually against her kitchen counter. When the taller girl smiled, she checked behind her, but there were no other guests there.

“Hey,” Elena greeted fluidly.

“Hi,” came Nora’s stilted response. She wrapped her arms around her waist, hoping for a modicum of comfort.

Elena Gilbert was not Nora’s friend. In fact, Elena had spent years mocking the younger girl. It was because of Elena and her clique that everyone in Mystic Falls knew exactly where Nora came from.

Elena had even given Nora a nickname. If it weren’t for Tyler, the whole school would have called her “Nutty Nora” instead of just half of it.

When her parents had died, Elena had withdrawn into herself enough that she had stopped actively tormenting Nora. Still, the two had never been friends, and Nora didn’t know why Elena deigned her important enough to speak to now.

“I’m so sorry about your dad,” Elena said, still wearing her sympathetic smile.

Nora didn’t understand.

“Thanks,” she said carefully. She wasn’t quite sure what else to say to the tall, dark-haired girl in front of her.

“I know how hard losing a parent can be, even when they aren’t perfect.” For all her empathy, Elena’s eyes were filled with something darker, almost angry.

What could haunt perfect Elena? Nora wondered.

“That’s very kind of you to say, thank you.” Nora was bewildered. Elena was acting almost like a completely different person.

And then the older girl moved in for a hug. Nora blinked rapidly as within an instant, Elena Gilbert was wrapping Nora up in her arms, as if she hadn’t once said she would sooner pick up dog poop with her bare hands than risk Nora touching her.

Oddly enough, the hug felt good. It was warm and firm, and soon Nora felt herself relaxing just enough to take a breath. Though instead of the usual mix of vanilla, roses, and recently added herbs that was Elena, Nora smelled something entirely different.

“Who are you?” She pushed away from the person wearing Elena Gilbert’s face, backing up rapidly.

The girl’s stance changed, instantly making her even taller. Her shoulders rolled back, and a confident smirk appeared on her lips.

“I’m impressed,” she said in a much clearer voice. “What made you realize?”

“Elena Gilbert would never hug me,” Nora admitted. She knew better than to tell people that she smelled them.

“Huh.” The taller girl stepped closer to Nora, making her cower. “Wow, jeez, I’m not going to hurt you. I need you, after all.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Nora’s alarm was growing by the second.

“Well, I don’t actually need you, but having you around just in case will be nice. It’s that or I get Tyler to help me,” she threatened.

Nora sighed. If it meant keeping Tyler safe, there was a lot she would do.

“Fine.”

“Great!” The girl grinned, and held out her hand. “I’m Katherine. And I think we’re going to be great friends.”

Reluctantly, Nora shook the hand in front of her.

“Now,” Katherine said, “what do you know about werewolves?”

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” the tinny voice said over Nora’s cell phone. She huffed in frustration at Nik’s inexplicable need to jump into things unthinkingly.

“And why is that? Can’t you just tell me what’s going on?” She had called Nik for an explanation, not so that the ancient vampire could insert himself into her daily life.

“Katerina Petrova,” He sounded far less British when he said the name, “is a doppelganger. And if your friend —”

“Not my friend,” Nora muttered.

“If your not friend looks exactly like her,” Nik corrected himself with a great sigh, “then that means that there is a human doppelganger. And I happen to require a human doppelganger.”

“So you’re coming all the way to the middle-of-nowhere Virginia to collect a special edition supernatural?”

“I am coming all the way to middle-of-nowhere Virginia in order to sacrifice a special edition supernatural.” Niklaus spoke bluntly, though Nora could hear a little bit of humor in his voice.

“And why is that?” Nora may not have liked Elena, but she didn’t especially want her dead.

“If I tell you that, I’m risking you having another seizure.” Now, he sounded serious. Nora bit her lip.

“Okay, then,” she relented. Over the years, Nora had discovered that certain things triggered her seizures. She got them when she went into the caves on the far side of her family’s property, when she followed the paths in her dreams to the falls, and most of all when Niklaus tried to tell her about his own memories. She had often wondered what had intertwined her vampire friend’s past so closely with her sickness, though Nik had told her it was better to leave it alone.

“Honoria,” he warned over the phone, “I mean it. I’ll tell you what I can when I get there.”

“Fine,” she huffed through her nose. Nik really could show his age, sometimes.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” His voice was coaxing, now. Did he feel bad about keeping her in the dark? Nora doubted it.

“See you then.”

“I really am sorry about your father, love,” he added.

“Thanks, Nik.” Nora flipped her phone shut and collapsed on her bed.

More vampires, she thought. Just what this town needs.

That night, she dreamed that she was in the clearing again.

She was running for the tree line, sobbing as the cold cut through her ripped skirts, until a pair of even colder arms caught her.

A man, tall and blue-eyed and terrifying, dragged her back to the center of the clearing, to a woman who’s grasp burned and bruised as it tightened on her wrists and hair.

Now the man was with another, broad and dark-haired, and a fire roared.

The flames lit up the moonless night, and the smoke choked her, and the soot began to stain her dress and skin.

Across from her, the two men wrestled a form to the ground. She knew what dream this was now.

Through the flames, Nora saw Niklaus gaze at her in horror, his eyes shining gold.

The hand in her hair wrenched her head back. A knife slid hot across her throat.

She woke to Niklaus’ scream.

Nora sighed when she saw the clock on her bed stand. It was 4 a.m., too early for much.

She rolled over, burrowing back into the covers. Maybe in an hour, she would go for a run.

Niklaus’ arrival in Mystic Falls resulted in Carol Lockwood immediately recruiting him for the historical society’s volunteer day. Mason, who had arrived the day of Richard’s wake, had laughed at the blond’s baffled expression upon experiencing Carol’s particular form of bossiness.

“It reminds me of my sister,” Nik revealed while he helped Nora set out glasses of lemonade. The two of them worked in companionable silence interrupted only when he asked her to identify certain people.

Nora was only half surprised that Nik recognized Stefan and Damon Salvatore on sight, as the two brothers had been an all-too-common topic of conversation. Nora was quite sure that Damon had been behind her uncle Logan’s death, but Nik had suspected Stefan.

Stefan, who Nora saw approaching her other uncle, Mason.

“What are they saying?” she asked.

Niklaus looked almost disappointed as Stefan caught Mason’s arm, before his eyes narrowed on Damon Salvatore approaching the conversation. His face lit up as the Salvatore brothers seemed to argue.

“Well, Stefan,” his voice caressed the name, somehow, “seems to be under the impression that making threats is the same as a peace negotiation. I do believe he’s rather backed your darling uncle into a preemptive strike.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that the Salvatore brothers know that Mason has activated his curse,” he answered, “and that the elder one has already tried to eliminate him. Poor form, really.”

“Poor form?” Nora wrinkled her nose at Nik’s under exaggeration.

“Well, he oughtn’t have struck if he didn’t plan to actually kill the wolf,” Nik snarked. “And now Stefan has inserted himself into the situation in order to back his brother. Really, it’d be much smarter just to watch it play out.”

“Because if Mason doesn’t kill Damon, Damon will kill Mason?”

“Precisely.”

Seeing the Salvatore brothers had left Mason’s car, Nora followed Nik to grab more boxes from the trunk. She swept her ashy brown hair behind her shoulders before grabbing a pile and carrying them over to Mason.

“Mason?”

Nora’s uncle looked up at the pair of them. He had been squatting over his box, pulling out various cans of polish and paint.

“What’s up?”

Nora cut to the chase.

“Please don’t kill Damon Salvatore,” she begged.

“And why would I do that?” he challenged.

Nora didn’t know what to say. Mason had listened to her when, as a child, she had told him vampires were as real as his brother made them out to be. He had also listened when she had told him that they weren’t all bad. Why was he acting like she was ignorant now?

“Because,” Nik thankfully cut in, “It won’t work. Damon has unfortunately wormed his way into a position where others will retaliate if you attempt to harm him, at least at the moment.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Mason said. “But Damon Salvatore has had this coming for a long time. I’m shocked, frankly, that none of the council members seem to recognize him.”

“What do you mean?” Nora asked.

Mason set down the wood he was holding and stood up.

“In ‘94, Zach Salvatore hosted an eclipse party,” he said. “That eclipse party was interrupted by a vampire attack. It was Zach’s favorite uncle Damon who slaughtered at least half of the attendees, and caused the survivors to restart the founder’s council.”

“But then Zach would never have let Damon take his spot,” Nora surmised. “Does that mean he’s not on vacation?”

“He never even got on a plane to Miami, let alone arrived there,” Mason confirmed. Nora gulped. Zach may have been the town hermit, but he’d always been nice to everyone. Nora remembered how Zach used to let her sit in as he taught Mason how to fix cars, and always made her feel important by asking her for specific tools. She’d pretended to be a surgical nurse.

“Despite how tragic I’m sure Damon’s many crimes are, killing him now is unlikely to succeed,” Nik said. “And even if it did, you’d die for it.”

Mason puffed up beneath his blue shirt.

“I’m alright with that.”

“Well, I’m not!” Nora said hotly. “You can’t just go on a suicide mission!”

“If I don’t, Damon’s going to kill me anyways,” Mason growled. “He’s been after me since the moment we met.”

Nik moved forward to place his hands on Mason’s shoulders.

“Or we wait, and we kill him on our terms instead of rushing in,” Nik said looking deeply into Mason’s eyes. “Give me a month, and I’ll have him walking willingly to the slaughter.”

Mason almost looked convinced, but his eyes darted over to the lemonade stand Nora was at only a minute earlier. He sighed.

“What are we going to do about the vervain in the lemonade, then?”

Chapter Text

Mason Lockwood hadn’t necessarily been a troubled kid, but he’d certainly been a mischievous one. The vast Lockwood estate and minimal supervision provided by his parents (and later, his much older brother) had allowed Mason just enough freedom to constantly make a mess of himself, though usually he did so without getting on the town sheriff’s bad side. He’d been the type to fish barefoot for crawdads and stuff toads in his pockets, only to release the unlucky amphibians onto his least favorite teacher’s desk, or to short-sheet every single bunk at summer camp.

As he grew older, though, Mason’s tendencies grew a bit different. Once his parents died, simple mischief turned into anger, and Mason’s lack of impulse control became outright recklessness. It was something he knew about himself, but it was easy to act thoughtlessly.

It was even easier when faced with his parents’ murderer.

Damon Salvatore was a menace, and his return to Mystic Falls, even if it had been a decade and a half since he had rampaged through the Salvatore yard, was unwelcome. The vampire’s infiltration of the town’s secret council was even more so. Mason ached to kill him.

It was ironic that now, Mason was back to his troublemaking ways for the sole purpose of saving Damon Salvatore.

Knocking over the lemonade table was easy enough on its own, but it was essential that none of the (apparently many) vampires present came into contact with so much as a single drop. The sight of painful burns suddenly appearing before quickly healing would be odd enough that Liz Forbes would notice, which was exactly what Mason was trying to avoid.

His niece’s vampire friend—it was ridiculous that she had one, but Nik was generally alright despite being older than dirt—had offered to compel one of the children running around the newly built park to knock everything over, but Mason had enough moral issues with that idea that he was more than willing to cause the necessary havoc himself.

It was simply a matter of timing. Wait for the Salvatore brothers, and apparently Caroline Forbes (because someone was stupid enough to turn the sheriff's daughter into a bloodsucking nightwalker), to move far enough from the refreshment station, and fein a dramatic fall that would send the entire table, and more importantly the vat and cups of vervain-spiked lemonade on top of it, tumbling onto the grass.

Mason executed it almost perfectly.

The neighborhood vamps left, Mason tripped, the table fell, and lemonade splashed—all over his thoroughly unimpressed niece. The tiny brunette didn’t even glare at him; she simply sighed and turned to walk to his car.

In and of itself, the situation wasn't so awful. The Nora he knew had never been the type for vengeance, preferring to simply hide from any of the malicious pranks Mason had played in his teen years, and allowing girls to gossip about her without saying so much as a word against them. The girl was about as confrontational as your average frightened rabbit. Mason knew this all too well, considering the amount of rabbits he had frightened on full moons.

Unfortunately, though, Mason wasn’t the only predator present. Damon Salvatore in all of his glory had come out of nowhere and was striding towards his niece, towel in hand. Mason jumped up, ready to cut the vampire off, when a warm hand on his shoulder pulled him back.

“You won’t get there in time,” Nik said in his annoyingly posh accent.

“We have to get him away from her,” Mason insisted to the blond vampire. Mason could see Damon wrapping the towel around his niece’s shoulders before winking at her charmingly. Nevermind that the girl was fifteen and half his size, of course Salvatore had to flirt.

“Nora’s rather good at handling herself.” Niklaus moved to stand next to him, watching the man speak to Mason’s niece with shrewd eyes. “It’s better for you to avoid contact, given that Damon’s attacked you before this.”

Mason’s mind reeled.

“Are we talking about the same girl?” Mason had seen Nora forget to speak in English, and only Richard had been able to get through to her when she zoned out for hours at a time—by yelling in Latin, of all things. She had once forgotten to eat for four days straight as she wove string together around black stones she’d pulled from a nearby creek to make Tyler a bracelet. Mason knew that his niece was barely able to handle herself, let alone a murderous vampire.

“Perhaps not.” Niklaus smirked at the scene before them. Damon finally seemed to be returning to wherever he came from, and Nora turned back towards Mason, motioning the two men over with a jerk of her head. The werewolf breathed a sigh of relief.

It was hard to resist holding on to his niece’s small frame for too long once he finally reached her. With Salvatore’s towel wrapped around her, Nora smelled like vampire, which verged on unacceptable. If Mason could have gotten away with replacing the scent of a strange enemy on her with his own, he would have done so immediately. Unfortunately, they were still very much in public.

“We have to go get more lemonade,” Nora said, shivering slightly despite the warm weather.

Nik had already claimed the driver’s seat of Mason’s car, having given Nora’s vervain-soaked form a wide berth. The blond vampire seemed to be amusing himself by playing with the many, many necklaces he wore. Mason tried not to grumble too hard as he walked to the passenger door.

“We can drop you off at home to change,” he told Nora, who had entered the car behind him. Nik held out his hand for the keys.

“I’ve been driving as long as there have been motor vehicles, and you are rather discombobulated at the moment,” he said, answering the unspoken question.

Mason supposed it was true. Nik was one thing, he didn’t smell like absolute death, but Damon was another. It was distracting, frankly, his scent all over his youngest, most defenseless family member. Damon was over a century old. Why on earth was he flirting with a teenager?

Then again, Mason’s girlfriend was far more than a century old and had been turned as a teenager, so maybe he had less room to judge than he’d originally thought.

Nik waited until Nora had been bundled into the house and the car was back on the highway to bring it up.

“Your hatred for Damon Salvatore is personal,” he observed dryly.

Mason let a long breath out his nose.

“My parents were at that eclipse party I talked about,” he admitted. It was stupid to lie to someone who could hear the change in your heart rate.

“And they didn’t survive?”

“Almost nobody did. It was a bloodbath.”

Nik pulled onto an exit ramp and allowed the car to slow.

“My stepfather killed my father and his entire family,” he said without turning from the road. “I was the one who found the bodies.”

Mason didn’t quite know what to do with this information. Nik pulled into the parking lot of a Harris Teeter and began driving through rows of parked cars.

“If I hadn’t been so afraid of the man, I would have killed him too,” Nik finally continued after parking the car. “I understand the urge to protect family.”

“But I need to think before running in and starting things?” Mason now understood the direction of this conversation.

“Well yes, but you also need to realize that Honoria’s hardly helpless.”

“Nora is a child.”

“Nora has likely killed more vampires than you. And furthermore, she was covered in vervain. All she had to do to Damon was brush his skin with her shirt.”

This was news to Mason.

“When on earth has Nora ever killed anything? She cried when her dad tried to take her deer hunting.” Mason had been there for the entire disaster of a bonding attempt.

Nik laughed.

“Now that does sound like her.”

Mason found himself following Nik through the grocery store. The blond vampire filled an entire cart with lemonade bottles and goldfish boxes, and made a detour to the bakery in order to take a sample sugar cookie. Mason found himself laughing as the two of them loaded the replacement refreshments into the car, while Nik told him of a particularly stubborn horse he once had wrangled.

“And then, the bloody thing turned its head and tried to bite me while I still sat on his back! It only got my shirt, but I was still deeply offended,” He grinned roguishly and tossed Mason his keys.

“And what did you do?” Mason had only encountered horses that were already trained and friendly. He’d been living in Florida for a year when Richard took the kids on vacation to Assateague Island.

“I waited. It took sixteen hours, but eventually, he was ready to walk normally.”

Mason blinked. Apparently, being a vampire made you a master horse trainer.

“Huh,” he said.

Once he’d started the car and turned out of the parking lot, Mason caught a bit of Damon Salvatore’s scent left on the backseat. He wrinkled his nose, hoping it would fade soon.

“You asked me about Nora’s ability to kill,” Nik said. He lounged carelessly in the passenger seat, his right ankle crossed over his left knee.

“You said that she had killed.” Frankly, Mason still found it hard to believe. Nora had hidden at the very sight of Dr. Gilbert the first time the man had walked into the first grade classroom she had shared with his son. She refused to watch nature documentaries, and he’d seen her letters to Liz Forbes and her local congressman after she’d learned about the death penalty.

“It’s a lot easier to kill in self-defense, especially if the person attacking you is already dead.” Nik’s words technically made sense. Nora didn’t have a taste for violence, but she had good reflexes, muay thai training, and the werewolf gene. It suddenly seemed a lot more possible.

“I don’t even know where she’d come across a vampire, though.”

“Your town was rather infested only a few weeks ago. Something about the Bennett witches opening a tomb?”

It was clear that Nik spent a lot more time talking to Mason’s niece than he did, because he hadn’t heard a word of this from any of his family members. Then again, Richard and Carol had thought that Mason had rejected the supernatural world entirely when he’d refused to join the vampire-slaying council at age 18.

“I thought all of the killings were Damon,” Mason said.

“Perhaps some, but Nora apparently had a few run-ins. Several vampires rather liked the look of Elena Gilbert, and were willing to go through your niece to get to her.”

Mason’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“And she killed them?” He saw Nik nod out of the corner of his eye. “Good.”

He wondered if it was even Elena Gilbert that the vampires had been after, or if it was Kate they were looking for. She had mentioned being hunted, once or twice. Only Nora would manage to get caught in the crosshairs of vampires while protecting someone who wasn’t even the target of the attacks they were under. The whole situation was ridiculous.

He prayed that his family wouldn’t become any more entangled in it.

Chapter Text

Nora shivered beneath her towel as she entered the Lockwood house. Despite her attempts to dry herself, her cotton t-shirt was still plastered to her front, and the house felt cool and dry compared to the warm spring sun.

The walk up the stairs was long. Nora's footsteps echoed off of each step as she heaved her weight up to her bedroom. By the time she removed her shoes and changed her shirt, her eyes were drooping. It was all too easy for Nora to crumple onto her bed, and it took mere moments to fall into a half-asleep daze.

Soon, Nora's mind drifted to her dreams. Niklaus, in his very existence, had proven that they were true in some aspect, though he denied her any further information. She had been through plenty of theories: everything from transplanted memories to reincarnation to (for a brief stint, at age twelve) believing she was locked in the matrix. Recently, the revelation of doppelgangers added another theory to Nora's long, long list.

Despite the terrifying implications of the dreams, most of them were comforting. The girl in Nora's dreams was far fiercer and freer than the girl she was in her waking life. Even the girl's death–she experienced it while seizing and sleeping alike–held a strange bravery. That bravery even helped to ease the pain of Richard Lockwood's death, among so many others. Becoming the girl in the dreams, even for only a few minutes at a time, was like falling into a fantasy world. Things were far from perfect: the girl spent a ridiculous amount of time preparing various plants or meats before they could even approach a cooking fire, and her cousins often teased her about the various gruff, wild-looking men in the village, but she was generally happy. The girl had her land, and her wolves, and her friends, and for some time that had been enough.

The girl had grown up among wolves, and soldiers, and wolves who were soldiers, and because of that it had been difficult to find time to simply be a girl, but she had put time into the endeavor. She had befriended girls, indigenous and settlers, and learned Powhatan paints as well as the braids of her family's eastern homelands. She had picked flowers and learned the seidhr and practiced to keep her family’s home and accounts, all while she laughed with the older women of the village.

She had liked an older, dark-skinned woman especially well. Ayana had been an expert in the ways of the seidhr just as she knew the local Powhatan rites, though she had been born in Nubia. The girl learned gladly at the wise woman's feet as she taught her prayers and medicines alike, bits of herblore and jewelry making, and even basket weaving.

It had been basket weaving the girl was attempting the first time by herself when she was approached by Kolr, a young village man whose very presence made her heart beat fast and loud in her chest. All dark eyes and dashing charm, Kolr grinned at the girl as she sat, surrounded by broken, uncooperative reeds as she desperately tried to curve the length she'd made into a spiral. The girl knew she looked a mess. She felt a mess. Still, she blushed as Kolr pulled strands of plant fiber from her unbound hair, revealing exactly how messy she'd gotten.

"It's easier with two people this way," he said, crouching down to wrap the fibers around the coil she'd made.

"Thank you," said the girl, her face growing ever redder.

"Your cousin Harrald is not here, is he?" Kolr looked around, but did not remove his hands from the bound coil of reeds. The girl, too, sat unmoving where he crouched, her hands clutching at the beginnings of her basket.

"No, why?"

"Elias does not like him." Kolr's statement prompted the girl to crane her own neck, searching for the taller, older version of the man before her. Upon seeing that Elias was not, in fact, lurking nearby, the girl returned her eyes to Kolr.

"Elias does not like Harrald because he believes Harrald to be courting Tatia," she revealed.

Kolr's eyes lit up and crinkles formed around them as a mischievous smirk overtook his face. Handing the girl a reed from the ground, he stood and brushed off his linen trousers.

"And here I believed him when he said it was a hunting dispute," he mused. He bowed shortly before turning to go. "Thank you!"

"Kolr!" The girl couldn't help but call out to him.

"Yes?"

"Harrald is not courting Tatia. He's set to marry Emera in the fall." The girl knew her cousin, wild as he may be, preferred Tatia's older, calmer sister, who was named for the dawn but also some long-dead ancestor of hers. Emera had been a grounding force for Harrald, and so her sweet cousin had spent much time with her and her family.

Kolr bowed again to the girl.

"I'll consider informing Elias!" he called across the clearing the girl sat in.

The girl couldn’t help but smile up from the ground, even as her cheeks still burned and her hands still clutched at woven reeds. Kolr’s mischievous joy was infectious.

Furthermore, the handsome young man had not only paid her attention—her, and no one else, though any of her cousins could have provided the information he fished for—but treated her kindly, helping her despite the womanly nature of her work and creating a secret held between them.

Perhaps her face was not burning, the girl realized. It could be that she was glowing.

The girl felt, but did not hear, feet pressing into the dirt floor below her. A warm, comforting hand was placed upon her shoulder.

”Nora.” It was the girl’s uncle, but it was wrong. Blue eyes narrowed in concern as the girl stood and turned to the man.

“What are you saying?” she asked, feeling a strange lump form at the back of her throat. Tightness built in the girl’s chest.

”What are you doing?” Her uncle’s lips did not move in time with the words that came from his mouth, ”Nora!”

All at once, it was Jeremy Gilbert before her, advancing on her, hazel-eyed and broad, and the girl—no, Nora now—shoved him away in fear.

“What—what was that?” Nora asked, eyes roving around in bewilderment. She stood at the base of the grand staircase in the Lockwood Manor, clad in a thin undershirt and paint-covered jeans. White-washed walls and careful spindlework replaced the wilderness that had consumed Nora’s vision only moments before, and Nora couldn’t help the slight drop of disappointment in her belly.

It was so beautiful there, she thought.

A pattering sound could be heard as Tyler, stocking-footed, ran down the stairs, clutching tighter to the railing than Nora had ever seen. His eyes narrowed on Nora and Jeremy standing on the marble flooring of the Lockwood foyer.

“What happened?” Tyler’s gaze switched between the two younger teens.

“I’m not—” Nora tripped over her tongue, “I’m not sure.”

“She was sleepwalking or something,” Jeremy cut in, all business. “I caught her sitting down here, shaking, and when I touched her, she was saying gibberish.”

Jeremy peered oddly at Tyler, and Nora found herself unable to decode the silent conversation the two boys in front of her had. She looked down at her hands to find them balled tightly in fists, pressing against nothing. Slowly, she forced them to relax.

Tyler gave a great sigh, and jerked his chin back up the stairs. Nora narrowed her eyes. Was her brother really allowing Jeremy Gilbert to stick around for this conversation? Everyone knew exactly where Elena got the details of Nora’s daily failings to mock her with.

The confusion Nora felt only increased as Jeremy’s palm pressed into her back, and he guided her up behind Tyler into her father’s study. The room was largely untouched: Richard’s books still sat on the shelves, his pens and blotting pad on the desk, and his knick-knacks were strategically placed throughout the room. For all that the study looked the same, Nora could smell that alcohol had recently been poured, and a lack of dust indicated that the study had been cleaned, not simply left alone.

Tyler sat on a leather couch, looking oddly at ease, and Jeremy plopped down across from him. Nora breathed sharply out her nose. This was not going to be a fun conversation.

She chose to sink down next to her brother, pulling up the sinking neckline of her camisole. Tyler was easily the lesser of the situation’s two evils.

“So,” started Jeremy, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees, “that happened.”

“I know you know about the other stuff, man, but you need to not say anything about this.” Tyler’s tone was a strange mix of pleading and commanding.

“Wait.” Nora finally found her words. “What other stuff?”

The two boys suddenly looked nervous. Yet again, they shared a glance, as if there was a secret understanding between them.

“You know,” said Tyler in a high-pitched voice, “about Uncle Mason and stuff.”

Nora’s eyes widened. Surely, Mason hadn’t told Tyler the family secret...though, given the high-pitched sound in the woods on Founder’s Day, and their father’s death, it would make sense for Mason to explain werewolves to Tyler. Jeremy Gilbert, on the other hand, had no reason to know. Tyler hadn’t been able to stand Jeremy since the previous June; he wouldn’t confide a single thing in the boy, especially since he was only her age.

“About why he didn’t want you at the swimming hole after dark?” Nora asked slowly, hoping that she was clear enough without letting anything unnecessary out of the bag.

“Wait, you actually know about—”Tyler lowered his voice to a whisper here, “—about the curse?”

Nora struggled not to roll her eyes.

“Yes,” she said instead, “I always knew. I told you about it when we were kids, remember?”

Nora’s first attempt at revealing the supernatural world to her family and their friends (despite her parents apparently knowing already) had been a disaster. It turned out that warning people not to stay out at night because of the local vampire population and telling people to stock up on holly wood and wolfsbane to ward off werewolves led to mockery from one’s peers, especially if you had already been deemed insane. The adults around Nora were kinder, passing off her warnings as a vivid imagination, but the entire debacle had been infuriating.

“You said all sorts of things were real when we were kids.” Tyler’s eyebrows drew together in confusion.

“And I was right, wasn’t I? Mason’s a werewolf, the town is crawling with vampires, and Sheila Bennet was a real witch.”

“You know about the vampires, too?” Jeremy jumped in, surprised.

“I told you about the vampires.” Bitterness colored Nora’s tone. “You chose to tell your sister and Bonnie, and they chose to tell everyone I believed in made up nightmares.” Nora had been six, and she and Jeremy had yet to despise each other, then.

“Well, I didn’t know about the vampires,” said Tyler. “What do you mean the town is crawling with them?”

Nora shrugged and turned to Jeremy.

“There are a few vampires in town,” he said, twisting the ring on his thumb, “but most of the crazy ones were eliminated on Founder’s Day. I guess the council rounded them all up in my dad’s office and burned them.”

A sharp pain lanced through Nora’s chest as Jeremy mentioned the incident in which her father died. Richard Lockwood had been many things. He’d committed adultery, pressured his children into a myriad of uncomfortable situations, and even slapped Tyler a few times after Mason had left town, but he wasn’t a vampire. And he certainly hadn’t deserved to be rounded up and burned to death in Grayson Gilbert’s office.

Tyler swallowed visibly. He pursed his lips and closed his eyes before he swallowed again, steeling himself.

“But my dad wasn’t a vampire,” he said.

“No, but there was a device that made a sound he heard. I’m guessing it’s because of the curse thing; you heard it too.” Jeremy was looking at the ground next to his feet as he spoke. “They got my girlfriend, too. She didn’t deserve it.”

The discomfort in the room became almost tangible. Mourning was always uncomfortable to Nora, but here, with the boy who’d facilitated most of the bullying she’d experienced in her childhood, it was even worse.

A part of her wanted to snatch all the sadness in the room and keep it to herself. Maybe Tyler deserved to mourn, too, but Jeremy had told her as a child that her mother hadn’t wanted her enough to stay alive, and when his own parents had died he’d cornered her in the halls to slap down her notebooks and shove her into lockers. It was hard to sympathize with Jeremy Gilbert, despite the empathy the situation forced her to feel.

“But they didn’t kill the Salvatores.” Nora’s statement was really a question. Damon Salvatore had been at the Founder’s Day celebration when she left, and Nora didn’t know how he’d been passed over. It was ironic that Damon Salvatore, the council’s raison d’être, had been one of the few vampires in town to escape their attack. Much like Damon’s participation in the council, the thought made the back of Nora’s throat burn. Jeremy turned his gaze to one of the hand-drawn portraits above Richard Lockwood, carefully avoiding Nora’s stare and Tyler’s bulging eyes.

“Damon...” Jeremy trailed off for a moment. “Damon was in there at first, but Stefan and Elena helped him escape.”

“The Salvatores are vampires?” Tyler couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“Yep,” Nora replied with the ghost of a wry smile. She wasn’t sure how much to say about the Salvatores, but one more person who knew about them was one more person who could protect themselves from Damon.

“Fuck,” Tyler swore emphatically, “How old is Elena’s boyfriend?”

Not as old as Mason’s girlfriend, Nora thought.

“I don’t think it’s Stefan we have to worry about,” she said aloud.

Jeremy’s eyes snapped to her, his face blank.

“Damon kills people. He killed Zach, and probably Logan, and heaven knows who else.”

“He killed me,” Jeremy added softly.

“What the fuck?”

Tyler’s exclamation managed to sum up Nora’s thoughts on the statement perfectly. Was Jeremy a vampire now, too? Was he even safe to be around right now? Nora tilted her head in confusion as her jaw clenched.

“This ring brought me back,” Jeremy showed the Lockwood siblings the signet ring he’d been twisting around his finger. “He snapped my neck because he was mad at Elena, and I’m fine, but you’re right. Damon’s insane.”

“Should you even be living there?” Tyler asked, seeming genuinely concerned. For all his frat boy bravado, Tyler was capable of genuine sweetness. It seemed that nothing brought that out quite like having someone to protect.

“That’s a good point, actually,” Nora said. “You can’t stay here; Damon’s been invited in, but maybe with Matt or Caroline?” It was good to have something to do. Taking action, even just having an action to take, made Nora feel better. Besides, she didn’t have to offer up her home to Jeremy Gilbert to keep him safe, just make a few suggestions.

“Wait, the invitation thing is real? What the fuck?” Tyler ran his hands through his hair, still sitting down. He looked as if at any moment, he’d begin breaking out in visible sweat.

“Yeah. Invitations, wooden stakes, not much else.” Jeremy leaned back in his seat.

“But Elena and Stefan were hanging out with Damon today,” Nora realized. Elena’s protectiveness over Jeremy had never had exceptions before. Why was she willing to excuse Damon for killing her brother when the fistfights Jeremy had started with Tyler in the past had resulted in her running straight to tattle to Richard Lockwood.

“Does Elena not know what Damon did?” Tyler’s thoughts appeared to be running in a similar vein to Nora’s.

“No,” Jeremy sighed, leaning forward again and clasping his hands. “He did it in front of her.”

“What the fuck.” Tyler’s refrain became a statement.

“Does Jenna know about any of this?” Nora asked.

“No, and I don’t think I can tell her,” Jeremy revealed. “Elena had Damon erase my memories when I first found out, so...”

Tyler, at this point, stood up rigidly and walked out of the room.

Nora looked at Jeremy, truly examining him for the first time in a long while.

He’d definitely grown over the years, and he’d come to the house in a short-sleeved polo shirt rather than the emo band rip-off styles he’d been wearing a few months ago. Despite his outward return to normal (or as normal as being the heir to a vampire-slaying founding family could be in Mystic Falls), Jeremy looked visibly stressed. There was a tightness around his uncharacteristically dull hazel eyes, and dark circles sat beneath them.

He looked pale, too, and his muscles were tensed as if he was preparing to run at the slightest movement.

“Call John,” Nora commanded the boy before her.

“What?”

“Your uncle, John. He knows about all of this stuff. He can help you.” Jeremy looked surprised at Nora’s statement.

“Yeah, but he hates all vampires,” he said. “What if he goes after someone like Stefan? Or finds out about your family and decides werewolves are a threat, too?”

Nora realized, then, that Jeremy looked impossibly older now than he had just a few days ago. It was like the weight of the world sat on his shoulders. The boy she’d known growing up would have never given thought to the consequences of running for help, or even to tattle or spread rumors. She blinked several times as wetness began to form in her eyes.

“John isn’t as militant as he can come off,” Nora found herself saying. “He’s smart, and he’ll find the smartest way to keep you safe, really.”

“You should be safe in your own home, and so should Jenna,” she added, reaching forward slowly to squeeze Jeremy’s hand.

She flinched back when his eyes met hers. A bit of life had returned to him, and a short smile flashed across his face.

“Thank you,” Jeremy said. He stood, and Nora followed him to the door. The walk down the stairs felt somehow lighter than her way up, and Nora pulled the front door open for Jeremy where before she would have simply let him do it himself. He turned to her before walking out.

“I won’t tell about what happened today,” he promised. Nora was shocked to realize she believed him.

“Thank you,” she replied. Maybe, just maybe, they could be friends. It was a funny thing—Grayson Gilbert and Richard Lockwood had tried for years to make their younger children get along, and now that the two patriarchs were gone, it was finally starting to happen.

Katerina Petrova had become Katherine Pierce slowly, over the centuries.

The transformation had begun even before she became a vampire. England hadn’t been a friendly place to foreigners in the sixteenth century (not that it was now) and while the Bulgarian Katerina had been an exotic curiosity and an object worthy of desire, Katherine was treated with far greater respect. In the end, getting what she wanted was easier when she belonged.

Now, Katherine was Kate—it was the name she’d given Mason, the one he and his friends called her in Florida, and while the persona of the fun-loving, spontaneous girl who fell in love with a werewolf wasn’t hard, per se, a part of it grated on her.

Kate, unlike Katherine, wasn’t very elegant. It wasn’t that Kate was entirely made up. Katherine had Kate inside of her; Kate was a facet of her true self.

Kate just lacked depth.

The shallow, thoughtless personality of a girl who would give up everything for the man she loved, heedless of the consequences, was perfect for luring in Mason Lockwood. Nevermind that Katherine thought that part of her had died when her daughter was ripped from her arms; it was necessary. Mason was a romantic.

It was a shame that he’d have to die, sweet as he was, but Katherine needed her freedom. She was tired of barely surviving.

Katherine wanted to live. She wanted to build a life, to form a family around her, to settle down without fear. Mason would help her do that, and if he died, then he died for the woman he loved.

Unlike Katherine, he seemed like he’d be willing.

And so, while she waited for Mason to return to Mrs. Flowers’ Bed and Breakfast, she thought through the pieces she had in place. Caroline, Mason and Elena were all in town to break the curse, though Katherine had yet to acquire the moonstone from her werewolf. Once she got the ugly rock, she could put her full energy into finding Elijah to contact Klaus.

The thought of Elijah still sent a pang of sorrow through Katherine’s heart. He’d betrayed her, but the fleeting interactions they’d had over the centuries still pulled her to him. Katherine had watched Elijah’s rage, his sorrow, the bits of joy he’d experienced over the years...his choices in lovers alone told her that a small part of him must still long for her, but she knew better than to truly approach.

Much like her beloved Stefan, Elijah had a monster locked beneath his veneer of dignified nobility. It made him dangerous, more so than even than the feared Ripper of Monterey, but that monster was part of what drew Katherine back into his vicinity again and again.

Like her, Elijah knew how to become someone else. Stefan had been able to do that too, shifting between her roguish lover and his father’s perfect son at the snap of a finger. Mason, her most recent conquest, had none of that ability. The werewolf was always just himself.

It was when Mason approached that Katherine knew something was wrong. Another set of footsteps, perfectly timed with Mason’s, echoed on the bed and breakfast’s wooden porch. Hackles raised, Katherine flitted to the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mason’s guest.

Instead, she caught a scent that made her blood run cold.

It couldn’t be, she thought, frozen by the window. Her tormentor couldn’t be here.

Mason didn’t even know who Klaus was, and Katherine reassured herself that she had imagined his scent even as she wondered if she could escape out the window.

There wasn’t enough time to unlock it, pull it open, and remove the screen before jumping out. Better not to look foolish.

The door of her room swung open without Mason’s usual knocking, and Katherine straightened to find the subject of her nightmares draped around her boyfriend. Niklaus Mikaelson had a possessive arm around Mason’s shoulders, and had somehow tucked the werewolf into him.

Mason looked frightened. He looked to Klaus for reassurance.

Katherine didn’t like the guilt she felt at that.

The blond man looked at her, eyes flickering over her form, and revealed his dimples with a cherubic smile.

“Zdravei, Katerina,” he said.

Chapter Text

Nora rested her head comfortably on the window of Matt Donovan’s pickup as they drove to her house. The vibrations from the car ran from her skull all the way down her spine, and rattled her teeth whenever Matt drove over a pothole, but the glass was soothing and cold.

“I just don’t get her behavior,” Matt said out of the blue.

Nora had no idea who he was referring to. She was far too busy trying to get a short nap in before half the town appeared at her doorstep to set up for the yearly masquerade, and she was too tired from sitting through the most boring Palm Sunday Mass of her life to grasp Matt’s words.

“Isn’t Jesus a boy?” she responded dumbly.

Matt let out a surprised bark of laughter.

“Not Jesus, Caroline! She’s been so hot and cold.”

“I’m not really an expert on Caroline Forbes, Matt.”

That much was true. Nora’s interactions with the town’s queen bee had been limited to official functions, where Caroline was all business, and polite but distant brushes at social events, where Caroline kept to her own group of friends, namely Elena Gilbert and Bonnie Bennett. Nora went out of her way to avoid those two girls, and therefore avoided Caroline by extension.

“But you’re a girl,” Matt argued.

Nora roused herself enough to blink at him in confusion.

“I just,” he paused here, looking straight out at the road. “Caroline is super nice one day and the next she’s attacking the people I talk to.”

“How is she attacking them?”

This question managed to get Matt to glance Nora’s way.

“What do you mean?”

“Well is she just being flat out mean? Is she jealous?” Nora figured the answer could give her a hint to why Caroline might be sending mixed signals.

“Definitely jealous,” Matt sighed. “But she should trust me, right? I’m not exactly putting myself into situations where I’m going to cheat on her.”

“Huh.” Nora didn’t really know what to say. “Well, what is she getting jealous over?”

“Basically any time I talk to another girl.” Matt pulled his truck into the long driveway in front of the Lockwood house.

“I don’t really know how to best respond to that,” Nora admitted. “She might just be going through something else.”

Nora may not have been close with Caroline, but anyone with eyes could see that the Mystic Falls pageant queen had always had feelings for Matt. When he was dating Elena, she kept those feelings to longing glances and wistful sighs—hardly signs of a jealous maniac.

“I’ll try to spend some time with her today,” Matt said. As they drove up the path, Nora could see the girl in question, clipboard in hand, nearly skipping across the front lawn.

“Good luck when she’s in party planning mode,” Nora warned.

Nora barely had time to change out of her church dress before her house was overrun by a host of volunteers. Matt, clad in a set of Tyler’s clothes, helped her brother carry an antique table through the chaos to the foyer while Caroline directed them. Nora couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

The blonde vampire was indeed in party planning mode, and therefore very much in her element. Nora watched her guide the boys through the doorway before she pointed a woman pushing a garment rack back out onto the porch. Caroline looked confident and self-assured, not at all the manic pile of jealousy Matt had described. Nora wasn't quite sure what he had even meant by his description.

As she approached Carol Lockwood, though, Nora got a slight idea of what may be happening with Caroline. Bonnie Bennett entered the house, and all of the energy drained from Caroline's form. Standing behind her stepmother, Nora leaned in to listen to the two girls.

"I thought you weren't coming," Bonnie said as she heated a box of candles onto a 19th century table.

Caroline, on the table's other side, flinched back.

"The masquerade is my favorite," she replied softly. Nora winced in sympathy, seeing Caroline curl in on herself.

"Well, if it's your favorite, then you—" Bonnie shoved the box of candles into the blonde's arms—"can take care of these. I'm going to talk to Stefan."

Nora had to clench her jaw to keep it from dropping as Bonnie flounced away. Wasn't Caroline her best friend?

"I can take those, if you want," Nora found herself saying. She brushed a strand of dark hair away from her face as Caroline Forbes turned to gaze at her with a surprisingly vulnerable look.

"The masquerade was always my dad's favorite too," she continued, taking a few steps towards the blonde. Eventually, Caroline seemed to come back to herself.

"Yes!" She handed Nora the box of candles. "They actually go out front. I'm not sure why she—why they're in here. We have our own inside candles, anyways."

"I got it," Nora cut the vampire off before her rambling continued on.

"Thank you!" And with that, chirpy Caroline was back. Nora sent her a quick smile before going to set the candles out in the front yard where they belonged.

It was easy to find a table set up full of polished candelabras, right next to the bottles of liquor for the outside bar. Nora set to placing the candles in their spots, relishing in the crisp spring air.

As she finished, Nora recognized two figures approaching in the distance. She waved wildly to get their attention.

"Nik! Mason!" Nora greeted enthusiastically as the two men grew closer. Niklaus' arm was wrapped tightly around Mason’s shoulders, hinging down from his neck in a fraternal manner.

"Hey, kiddo," said Nora's uncle. He extricated himself momentarily from the vampire next to him to wrap her in a tight hug. "You feeling alright?"

"Yeah, of course." Nora felt Nik's other arm fall onto her shoulder as she walked back to the house with them. "It's a little weird, but it's not like I can do anything about it."

"Given that this is a Lockwood family tradition, it's hardly shameful to be jarred by a member of said family being missing," Nik said.

Nora swallowed. She didn't want to think about her dad right now. It was easier to focus on the little details, like the fairy lights and dusting and mask sewing, than to acknowledge the gaping hole in her chest.

Richard could be a nightmare about preparing for the masquerade, but it had always been his favorite. Nora remembered how she'd danced around the room on her father's feet there as a child, how even later he'd always saved her a special dance every year.

It was so hard for Nora to miss someone who had hurt her so badly, but also built her up into the person she was. Richard's glowing compliments on her skills in ballroom dance and poetic ramblings on the nature of masquerades had allowed her a great deal of confidence, if only for one night a year, that she'd never have had otherwise.

She'd never admit to anyone that she'd kissed Chad Hamilton at the masquerade two years ago. Even Chad would never find out.

"There's Carol," Mason’s voice drew Nora out of her thoughts as they entered the house, "Oh, and Jenna. I wanted you to meet her, Nik."

Nora slid out from underneath Nik's arm to let him pass through the doorway to the dining room with her uncle. As she returned to his side, she saw his eyes lock on something just outside the windows before they snapped back to Jenna, who gave the trio a genial smile.

"Jenna, this is Nik," Mason presented the blond vampire proudly, "an old family friend."

Reluctantly, Niklaus removed his arm from Mason’s shoulders to extend a hand to Jenna.

"It's a pleasure," he said, shaking her hand with a charming smile.

"Nice to meet you," Jenna replied. "Are you in town long?"

"For about a month or so." Nik's gaze returned to the window, narrowing on something outside. "I thought it might be nice to lend some support to friends in time of need, and I haven't been to Virginia in ages, so I thought it would be nice to stay awhile."

"Well, we're glad to have you." Jenna followed Niks gaze for a moment, before she motioned to some crates on the dining room table. "You know, if you'd like to explore out there, I could use someone to take these out to the wet bar outside."

Nik's eyes glinted oddly as he smiled at the strawberry blonde woman before him.

"We'd be glad to," he said, handing a crate to Mason before picking one up himself. "Anything to help."

Nora stood stock still as the two men walked out the door. She could feel Jenna looking at her, trying to peer into her soul.

"Are they dating?" Jenna's question threw Nora for a loop.

"What? No." Nora shook her head. "At least I don't think so. I don't think Mason likes boys."

"He never did in high school."

"You would know better than I would," Nora admitted. Mason had been a cool babysitter, but he hadn't exactly confided anything in Nora until he'd activated his werewolf curse a year ago. She had never heard a thing about his love life.

Jenna hummed in agreement.

Nora shifted awkwardly.

“So, um—” she started.

“Jeremy, hey!” Jenna’s voice cut her off.

“Hey, Aunt Jenna,” said Jeremy Gilbert as he ducked into the room, “Can I steal Nora for a minute?”

Jenna looked between the two of them, her brows furrowed.

“Sure,” she replied, and she found Jeremy Gilbert ushering her up the stairs to her father’s study.

The door closed, and Nora looked around the room. It had only been a day, and nothing had been moved, and yet everything seemed imperceptibly different in here. Yesterday, sitting in here with Tyler and Jeremy, it had been intimidating, like there was an extra presence in the room. Today, the room was suffocating in its emptiness.

Nora turned to Jeremy, who leaned back onto her father’s desk. He had grown tall, she realized. Even half-sat down like he was, Jeremy was still a full head taller than her.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I went to see Damon,” Jeremy started, ignoring Nora’s rapidly paling face, “and he wants the moonstone.”

“What? Why does he want it?” That wasn't going to go over well with anyone.

“Because Katherine wants it.” Jeremy’s words made Nora wrinkle her nose. “Tyler told me Mason was asking around for it, and since he never wanted it before we figured it must be because of Katherine. After all, it’s not like Mason can break the curse of the sun and moon on his own...”

“The what?” Nora had researched a lot of curses in her lifetime, and she’d never heard of this.

“The curse of the sun and moon?” Jeremy said it like it was an all important title. “It’s an ancient Aztec curse that was cast on vampires and werewolves thousands of years ago. Werewolves could only turn on the full moon, and vampires couldn’t walk in the sun.”

“That sounds really wrong,” Nora said.

“We found research on it from Alaric’s wife,” Jeremy said. “She was an expert on the paranormal, and she knew all about werewolves and vampires.”

But werewolves are eons older than vampires, Nora thought. She wasn’t sure where the thought came from, though. She had no way to prove it, and it wasn’t like anyone had believed her before.

“Okay, but I’m not sure why you’re trusting anything Damon’s got, or even talking to him,” she said, “let alone going to his house.”

“Look, if I’m going to be safe, I need as much information as possible,” Jeremy replied. “Uncle John is flying in tonight, but that doesn’t stop me from being mixed up in all of this now. Anyways, I need the moonstone to get him to stop going after your family.”

“He can’t have it.” the words rushed out of Nora’s mouth uncontrollably. “He can’t, it’s supposed to stay. Tyler is supposed to watch it, or Mason can, but it needs to stay here with us.”

Nora shook, she wasn’t sure why, but her whole body shook like a leaf. Jeremy crossed the room in an instant to grab her, helping her to the nearby couch before she collapsed.

“Hey, hey, you’re fine.” He knelt in front of her, rubbing her arms soothingly. “We don’t have to give it to him. We’ll figure something out.”

Nora took a deep, shuddering breath, nodding her head. Jeremy moved to sit next to her.

“Can you stall? Tell him Tyler gave the stone to Mason? I can figure something out if I have a few hours.”

Nik had witch friends who could make a replica, and it would be easy enough to hide it somewhere.

“Yeah, I can do that.” Jeremy leaned forward, decidedly not looking at Nora. “Damon might react poorly to that, though.”

“Will he take it out on you?”

“No, but he’s already looking for a reason to go after Mason.”

“So we warn Mason, then.”

“Okay.” Jeremy stood, wiping his palms on his jeans. “You good to go find him?”

“Yeah,” Nora said, attempting to stand on her still shaking legs. Jeremy reached around her waist to grab her elbow as her legs buckled. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” he said. The pair walked silently down the hall.

Nora peered over the balcony to see Caroline discussing something intently with Elena Gilbert in the foyer below them. She recognized no one else.

I really am a shut-in, she thought. Nora’s classmates at school had hardly been kind to her, but she hadn’t tried very hard to reach out, either. Kelly Beach had been another victim of taunts and rumors at school, but unlike Nora, she’d still bothered to make more friends than just her brother. Then again, Kelly Beach had never started seizing in the middle of French class.

Elena looked sharply at Jeremy as he helped Nora down the stairs, and Caroline turned to send her a vaguely sympathetic look. Fearing the elder Gilbert sibling’s wrath, Nora patted Jeremy’s hand on her left elbow.

“I’m gonna go find Mason now, thanks,” she murmured, looking studiously at her feet. Jeremy’s grip tightened in a quick squeeze before he let go.

“I need to talk to you now,” Elena said, darting forward to pull Jeremy away by the wrist. Nora looked up to see her dragging him across the foyer to another set of rooms.

She really was different than Katherine, who did everything coyly. Elena was all direct determination, almost savage in her sincerity. If she weren’t afraid of the older girl, Nora would admire it.

As she turned the other way to look for her uncle, Nora saw Caroline send her a quick smile. She flashed one in return as she headed towards the kitchen, hoping her uncle was still predictable enough to have kept his habit of hiding in there.

Fortunately, Mason was in the kitchen, leaning next to an open water bottle on the countertop. Nora could see Niklaus’ back as Mason listened raptly to what he was saying.

“They’re all kept in some room in the Vatican,” Nik continued on while Mason laughed aloud.

“What? Still in the vases?” Mason grinned while he spoke.

“Oh, yes.” Nora could hear Nik’s smirk. “Poor members, waiting to be reunited with their larger bodies. Come in, Nora love.”
Mason, who had been sipping his water, choked. Nora didn’t quite know what to do with all of his gasps and coughs, since he held up a hand at her approach. She stood quite uselessly before her uncle until finally, he breathed out deeply.

“I’ve got it now, sorry,” he said, “wrong pipe. What’s up, kid?”

Nora gulped, feeling a pair of eyes on each side of her. Her hand came up to rub at the junction between her shoulder and neck.

“I just talked with Jeremy Gilbert,” she admitted. Mason tilted his head in confusion.

“Did he say something? Tyler said he was nice to you guys yesterday.”

“He was nice, but he came because Damon Salvatore is demanding the moonstone.”

Mason’s eyes hardened at the mere mention of the black-haired vampire. A roiling sensation began to overtake Nora’s stomach.

“And?”

“I asked Jeremy to stall by saying Tyler didn’t have it anymore,” she clenched her eyes shut as she spoke, “and logically, that would mean he gave it to you.”

“So he’s coming after me,” Mason said.

Nora could only nod. Nik, who had remained silent until then, spoke up.

“What do we need to do?”

Nora reviewed her plan.

“We need to create a replica, and then Mason can hide it.” She hoped her voice wasn’t wavering too much.

“Alright,” the blond nodded seriously, “I’ll call Greta. Do we need anything else?”

“I have an idea, actually,” Mason said. “Nora, can you get the dried vervain from the cellar?”

It took three hours for Nora to realize her plan had gone wrong.

In her defense, she had been busy. Carol had given her about twelve different tasks, and she found herself running all over the house and grounds trying to complete them. She had rummaged through the attic, closets and spare rooms for various antiques and objets d’art on Carol’s list, finding everything from specific throw pillows to a pair of silk dancing slippers from the 18th century.

It wasn’t until Stefan Salvatore blatantly lied about Mason’s whereabouts that Nora remembered Damon’s demands for the moonstone. It took a lot out of her not to collapse into nervous tears on the spot, hearing Stefan’s heart skip a beat while he spoke. She’d never even considered that the younger Salvatore brother could be involved in Damon’s plotting.

She’d managed to keep it together long enough to gather Niklaus and meet Jeremy Gilbert outside the Salvatore Boarding House.

“So you’re friends with the Lockwoods,” Jeremy seemed highly incredulous, “but you’re a vampire?”

“Yes,” Nik ground out.

“I also,” his tone changed to one full of pride, “happen to be much older than the vampire in that house. You needn’t worry about having to do the killing.”

“I still don’t get why you’re rescuing a werewolf,” Jeremy said.

“Mason is his friend, Jeremy. It’s very possible,” Nora cut in, annoyed.

“Fine,” Jeremy sighed. “I’ll go in first, see if I can get Damon to let Mason go.”

“And if he doesn’t, I’ll step in. You,” Nik turned to Nora, “will wait in the car.”

“I can be useful!”

“You staying here is useful,” the vampire said. “Your uncle will need pack to heal.”

“Fine,” Nora grumbled. She narrowed her eyes as Nik ruffled her hair before he followed Jeremy up the boarding house drive. Snorting beneath her breath, she combed her fingers through her tangled locks.

Nora climbed into the backseat of the car Niklaus brought, her father’s car, and curled up lying on her side. Maybe she could finally get in the nap she was missing.

Within moments, she realized that a nap would not be possible.

The typically smooth leather of the bench seats pulled at the skin of her arms and legs. The air in the car pressed down all around Nora. Where only moments ago it had been crisp, the air now felt so thick it hardly made its way in or out of her lungs. Nora couldn’t breathe, and her heartbeat grew faster and faster even as she lay stock still.

She could hear her heart pounding in her ears, beating like the hooves of warhorses on the banks of the Marmara.

They are coming, she thought, overwhelmed by a sense of doom. Stay still.

Nora jerked upright at that thought. Who on earth was coming?

Jeremy Gilbert, as much as Nora had hated him before, never made her feel this afraid. And Nik was her friend. He had always been her friend.

“Agios o theos, agios iskiros, agios athanatos, eleison imas,” she whispered. It was no magic spell, but the words made her feel better.

Nora found herself clambering from the back of her father’s car into the front seats. Niklaus had been using the car for days at this point, and knowing him, Nora suspected that he’d have left at least some form of art supplies somewhere in the vehicle. Surely enough, she was able to find a sketchbook and several expensive pencils in the glovebox.

Fancy, she thought, amused. Of course Nik had expensive pencils.

Pulling the supplies out of the glovebox, Nora flipped through the sketchbook. Her vampire friend had used it to record several local plants and birds, scattered among a truly unnerving amount of drawings of Stefan Salvatore. Nora wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed or amused at the sight.

Eventually, she found a blank page next to a charming portrait of Mason mid-laughter. Smoothing it out, she started to draw.

Nora wasn’t nearly as good as Niklaus—she wasn’t gifted, not by a long shot—but she’d taken enough years of art classes to create a passable picture of the landscape in front of her. Slowly but surely, she outlined the curves of tree trunks, traced the long drive of the hill to the boarding house, and sketched out the looming building in the distance.

She added fluffy outlines indicating bunches of leaves on her trees, and began to draw some occasional blades of grass when she spotted movement in the distance. Nora squinted, hoping to see some sign of what exactly had occurred in the Salvatore house.

Her breath caught when she saw only two figures approaching, rather than three. Surely everyone had made it out.

Nora quickly exited the car, slamming the door behind her. As she stumbled forward, she saw that the two figures were, in fact, three people. Jeremy Gilbert was alone, massaging his throat with both hands. Next to him, Nik carried a limp Mason in his arms like a twisted version of the Pieta.

Nora’s heart beat faster and faster again, now up in her throat. Her jaw hurt. The pounding in her ears, the hoofbeats, returned.

“Open the door,” directed Jeremy as the men reached the car. Nora pulled open the back door she’d slipped through only minutes earlier, and Nik let Mason down slowly.

Her uncle looked horrible—blood was smeared around his mouth, and Nora could count at least four wounds gaping open beneath burning holes in his shirt. Mason coughed, spitting more blood on the floor of the car, and Nora felt the urge to vomit.

“What is this?” Nora’s throat ached as she asked. The wounds, the damage—she had seen Damon’s victims before, but nothing like this.

“Torture,” Jeremy said from next to her. Nora looked over to see him staring down at Mason mournfully, hands in his pockets.

“Is he going to be okay?” The coughing up blood was a bad sign.

“He’ll be fine.” Nik, now. His arms snaked behind Nora and Jeremy alike, and he pushed them to the passenger side of the car before moving to get in the driver’s seat.

Nora sat down and immediately pulled Mason’s head into her lap. His eyes fluttered, and his brown eyes met her blue before they closed again. She swallowed, wondering if he was even aware at this point.

“Once the wolfsbane is out of his system, I can give him my blood.” Nik started the car with Jeremy in the passenger seat. “I would give it to him now, but I’ve seen vampire blood merely compound the poisoning, rather than heal it. I don’t want to risk that.”

Nora nodded and began stroking Mason’s hair. Damon had already (probably, at least) killed one of her uncles; she didn’t need the other to die from his violence.

Did Mason even know that Logan had died? Nora couldn’t remember if the sheriff’s office had released the death, or if they’d covered it up. They had been friends, Logan and Mason.

Nora could remember days at her great uncle Tobias Fell’s house when Logan invited packs of his teenage friends over. Mason would drive her and Tyler over early in the morning, and the three of them would stay until dusk, playing games and exploring the entire Fell compound.

Once, Mason had distracted Logan and the other teens while Nora and Tyler switched out his shampoo for hair dye. Jenna Sommers had reportedly laughed so hard water came out her nose when Logan had arrived at school the next day with vivid magenta hair.

Later, Logan had said that it was Jenna’s hysterical laughter that had pushed him to ask her out, prompting Mason to confess his role in the whole scheme. The Mystic Grill had been treated to the sight of Logan launching himself over the table they were sitting at to tackle Mason, an occasion Nora used to remember fondly.

Now, the thought just made her ache.

As the car pulled to a stop, Nora blinked. Instead of the Lockwood house, they had parked in front of a charming Charleston single house with white wooden siding. Wooden rocking chairs sat on the ground level of the double porch.

“Is this someone’s house?” Nora asked. Niklaus and Jeremy seemed far too confident exiting the car not to be somewhat familiar with this place, but Nora had never been here before.

Jeremy stood, cross-armed, right outside Nora’s car door.

“Didn’t you see the sign?” He gestured to a white-painted wooden sign in the small yard, just a few feet behind the car. “It’s a bed and breakfast.”

“Oh.” Nora felt a bit silly. She’d clearly gotten distracted.

Niklaus had pulled Mason back up into his arms, and climbed up the porch steps to the front door of the building. Nora rushed to open the door, and the three men with her went through.

Jeremy’s head turned as he took in the decor. Nora likely would have taken the time to admire the cute knick-knacks and single-pane windows herself in another circumstance, but it was hard to look away from Mason, whose shallow but steady breaths echoed off of the white-washed walls.

Nora followed Nik up the stairs and through a door to a bedroom. She blinked in shock to see Katherine, because it certainly couldn’t be Elena Gilbert, sitting rigidly in a chair in the corner. Her curls hung limp around her sweat covered face, but she remained utterly unmoving even as Niklaus laid Mason on the bed, even as his blood began to leak onto its fluffy white duvet and pillows.

Before she asked the obvious question, though, Nora followed her urge to wipe Mason’s hair back from his face. His skin was clammy. She pursed her lips in displeasure before turning k to Nik, who was standing, grinning ominously over Katherine.

“Why are we here?” Nora asked. Shouldn’t they have gone back to her house? “And why is she here?”

Niklaus turned to her, slowly, smile slowly sliding off his face.

“She needs to see what she’s done.” Nik walked over to sit on the bed next to Mason.

“But this was Damon.”

“You don’t think Katerina orchestrated this?”

“I don’t think she orchestrated Mason’s torture, no.”

And suddenly, Nik was not sitting behind Nora but standing before her.

“In that case,” he pulled a phone from his pocket that was definitely not his Blackberry, “let’s test that out.”

What followed was possibly the oddest sequence of events Nora had ever seen. It was almost as if Nik—the sweet, sensitive soul from her dream-memories; the playful, charming man she’d known these past years—vanished, and in his place stood a monster.

The blond man handed the phone to Katherine, and like in a trance, she followed his every direction. Nora was as enthralled as she was sickened—watching the two vampires in front of her was like a car crash, or a weather disaster on television. The only difference was the control. Niklaus had clearly compelled Katherine (and who knew he could compel another vampire?) and he was using her as a marionette, putting on a performance.

As Katherine’s call to Damon Salvatore ended, Jeremy walked in, holding his own cell phone in hand.

“John just got in to Richmond,” he announced, taking Nik’s abandoned seat on the bed. “What are you two up to?”

“I have no part in this.” Nora couldn’t get the words out fast enough. She gestured to Nik and Katherine, who faced each other like a child and his doll.

Nik turned his head to face the two teens.

“I had Katerina call Mason’s phone, to complete the facade,” he announced. “Damon believes that he successfully killed Mason. Now, they’ll be waiting for Katherine’s vengeance.”

“Why are we doing this?” Nora cut in. All of the subterfuge was beginning to seem unnecessary, and Niklaus’ use of Katherine verged on cruelty.

“Damon won’t stop if he thinks Mason is alive,” Jeremy said seriously. “He tried to strangle me when I suggested he stop.”

Nora sighed and pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes.

“Shit.”

“In the long term, we don’t really care who has the fake moonstone, but it’s better if everyone’s fighting over it,” Nik said. “That way, they’re distracted.”

Jeremy sat up straighter on the bed.

“Distracted from what?” he asked. “Isn’t the moonstone the seal for the werewolf curse? Why would you want to break that?”

“I don’t,” Niklaus replied, giving no more information. Nora’s eyes narrowed on him.

Elena is still Jeremy’s sister, she thought, remembering what Nik had said about sacrificing her. Could the moonstone be linked? She looked at the floor before she swallowed.

“Nik just likes to have pretty much everything,” she lied. “He’s a collector of the supernatural.”

“The more power I have, the less I can be killed,” Niklaus added. Nora had a feeling that was a lie too, despite how the logic resonated.

Her fingers twitched at her side. She didn’t know whether to feel guilty or not: Elena had always been awful, sure, but death was so final. And Jeremy, despite their past, had been pretty okay recently. Elena could become nicer, and even if she didn’t, nobody deserved to die, and nobody ought to lose their family to ritual sacrifice.

“Anyways, speaking of power, I’ve texted a very powerful witch of mine to come help Mason,” Nik continued. “She ought to be here soon.”

Nora nodded and sat next to Jeremy, uncomfortably trapped in this limbo. She could tell him Nik’s plans and betray the man who’d been one of her only friends, or hide the truth and let Jeremy’s sister die. Either way, she was an awful person.

Hopefully Mason would know what to do. He would know what to do when he woke up.

Hopefully Mason would wake up.

Chapter Text

Nora spent most of Monday fighting through a fog.

In every room, shadows lurked— a solemn dark-haired man nodded at the bottom of the stairs, helping her down, the woman who killed her in her dreams leaned over Nora’s shoulder as she prepared her peppermint tea and whispered about steeping times, and out of the corner of her eyes Nora could glimpse a man with a frothy cravat tucked into a richly patterned silk vest staring blankly past her, his face locked into a mask of silent horror.

She tried to ignore all of them, but often that meant ignoring the people who were really there. It was hard to distinguish caterers from hallucinations, and so Nora allowed herself to fade into daydreams, smiling vacantly, in hopes that nobody would be offended.

As long as she avoided the kitchen, Nora would be fine.

And so, she settled with her tea in the library and pulled a book from the shelf. The gold leaf was peeling from Moby Dick’s leather cover, and its pages were filled with creases from all of the times Nora had stopped mid-chapter without a bookmark. Still, the paper held the sweet smell of wood pulp one could only find wafting from an old, well-worn book.

“But war is pain, and hate is woe,” spoke the dark-haired man from the stairs in a soft, clear murmur.

Nora turned, but nobody was behind her. The dark-haired man had vanished, but Nora remembered the passage. She could imagine his voice reading it to her—or maybe she could recount it.

“Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me,” she finished Ahab’s monologue, her response echoing off the library’s carved oak shelves, “and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”

The book was clear. The sailors must ride against the storm, the knight must face down the dragon, fire must be fought with fire. No peace alone could remedy injustice.

Those who do not fight injustice allow it to prevail.

A cold tear ran down Nora’s cheek as her stomach sank. She squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, her mouth pulling into an involuntary grimace.

If Nora twisted her thoughts enough, she could justify it, couldn’t she? After all, if her dream-memories were right, Niklaus had suffered terribly. He had told Nora that he needed the doppelganger—not wanted, needed—and surely one death could remedy the pain that her friend continued to endure? Nik had always been so kind to Nora; he had listened to all of her problems for years, and met up with her family on vacations just to whisk them away to hole-in-the-wall spots with the best food she’d ever eaten, and sat Tyler down for a talk when he heard the 14 year-old repeating something he’d heard about one of Jenna Sommers’ friends.

Nik was good. Surely sacrificing the girl who once posted notes from Nora’s therapist on the school message boards wasn’t evil.

Except it was.

Killing people, slitting their throats open over an open fire with the moonstone in hand, was evil. It was wrong, so wrong Nora felt it in her bones; she saw it in her dreams.

She could feel the blonde woman wrenching her hair back, gripping her with a preternatural strength. She could see the dark-haired man from the stairs straining, holding back Niklaus as he screamed.

Elias, Nora suddenly remembered. The man’s name was Elias, and he was filled with regret.

Nora closed her book and swallowed as she stood, leaving behind the long-cooled mug of peppermint tea. She brushed her dark hair out of her face, reveling in its weight as it fell down her back.

Nora knew what to do now. She had a party to get ready for, after all.

Chattering guests in masks and cocktail attire filled the rooms and lush grounds of the Lockwood estate, creating a blur of jewel-toned polyester satin dashed through with black suits as they mingled and ate hors d'oeuvres. From her bedroom window, Nora could see a crowd gathering on the back patio to watch a man swing fire in sweeping loops while a Lady Gaga song blared over the sound system.

It was loud. Nora tried not to cringe.

Her own red dress was shockingly bright compared to what she could see outside, and its shade only emphasized the inflamed veins in her eyes from crying all afternoon. Between all the black and purple, Nora would be a very red, watery beacon.

She would never fit in.

Nora turned to the vanity against the wall, hoping that some carefully placed powder could alleviate her redness. The slightly upturned tip of her otherwise delicate nose would certainly look less bulbous, after all, if it were not so red. Her cheeks, already caked in enough foundation and powder that not a single one of her (admittedly sparse) freckles shone through, still looked splotchy. Nora pressed more powder onto a makeup sponge before getting to work.

As she examined her finishing touches, the door to her bedroom burst open, and Tina Fell entered in a forest green flurry of excitement. Nora knew her pretty blonde cousin was an extrovert, but she frankly never understood how Tina could bring energy into a room the way she did. Her very steps were filled with happiness.

“Nora, you look amazing!” Tina looked Nora up and down, before raising her hand and twirling it. “Spin, spin, spin!”

Nora obeyed, and fell into a fit of giggles with her cousin. Tina’s confidence was contagious, but Nora still looked to the slightly older girl for reassurance.

“I don’t look all gross and red?” Nora asked.

“You look gorgeous. Now that I’m looking for it, your eyes are a little red, but I couldn’t tell before.”

Nora knew she could trust Tina to share the brutal truth, even if her cousin always did so tactfully, despite the actual content of her words.

She grinned, pulling open the door Tina had just come through.

“Let’s go then.”

Tina burst into laughter yet again.

“You’re forgetting the masks,” she said, pointing to Nora’s dresser.

“Oh, right.” Nora grabbed two simple black domino masks, handing one to Tina.

The two girls entwined their hands as they descended the ornate wooden staircase into the mass of schmoozing teens and adults. Carol Lockwood flitted from guest to guest, smiling beatifically behind a lacy, handheld mask.

“Blair’s over there with Mr. Whitmore,” Tina leaned into Nora to divulge, gesturing past an elaborately costumed server carrying a tray of crudités. “She’s been bragging about Meredith’s residency all day; no doubt she’s torturing the poor guy with the same three stories she told me.”

Meredith Fell, Blair’s older sister, was currently in residence at John Hopkins, which was admittedly an impressive feat. While Tina and Blair often quarreled over petty things, the two of them had been raised with Nora—the three girls only shared common ancestors three generations back, but they were the only Fells of their age, and that came with a certain camaraderie.

Nora’s eyes flicked over the crowd.

“Is Jeremy Gilbert here?” she asked. “Or John? I have to talk to one of them.”

Tina’s hazel-green eyes widened comically before they narrowed on Nora’s.

“Since when do you talk to Jeremy Gilbert?”

Nora wrung her hands, wracking herself for an acceptable explanation. Tina, of all people, would hardly believe that Nora had suddenly befriended Elena Gilbert’s younger brother.

“It’s for a school thing,” Nora lied, nervously pulling at a strand of her curled hair. “Mr. Saltzman put us together on this project, and it’s due when spring break is over, so I’m trying to get ahold of him.”

“Well bless his heart,” Tina scoffed. “That must be torture.”

“It’s not that awful,” Nora defended. “Jeremy’s actually been pretty okay.”

“Jeremy shoved you into your locker so hard you bled last year.”

“I didn’t say he was great; I said he was okay.”

Tina grabbed Nora’s hand with both of hers, looking solemn.

“You know you can’t trust him, right?”

Nora looked at her shoes.

“I know that, I just...” She swallowed hard, trying to breathe through the frustration. “He’s really helped me out a few times, so I’m trying to help him with our project. He needs it.”

There. That was as true as Nora could make it. Tina’s eyes narrowed as she weighed Nora’s words.

“I guess it’s better not to owe a Gilbert anything,” she said, considering. “I mean, I refused Elena one favor in the ninth grade she thought I owed her and now I’m simultaneously an icy snob and an indulgent gossip.”

Nora snorted.

“You also told everyone that she had mono,” she reminded.

“I told Tyler that she had mono, and no one else. Anyways, she says it about the whole family. It’s insane.”

Jenna Sommers may have actually started that one, she thought, after Logan.

Straightening herself, Nora tried to deflect from her train of thought.

“Right, like us terrible Fells can’t have individual personalities?”

“Of course not!” Tina joked. “We’re a hive mind!”

The two girls laughed again at that.

“New conspiracy theory,” Nora managed to eke out between bursts of giggles, “The Fell family is the Borg.”

Tina snorted loudly, and then clapped a well-manicured hand over her mouth.

“There’s Jeremy Gilbert,” she said, after lowering her hand to her side, “with Bonnie Bennett. I’m going to get some food.”

She flounced off expertly in her strappy heels, blond hair streaming like a ribbon the color of white gold behind her.

Nora’s eyes trailed after her cousin before she started towards Jeremy. Bonnie Bennett had left him to speak to another woman, and so he stood alone. Nora was grateful. Bonnie was terrifying.

Jeremy looked up at Nora, placing a watch into the pocket of his black pants.

“Hey,” he said. “Nice dress.”

“Oh, hi.” Nora was taken aback. “Thank you, that’s very kind of you.”

“Not at all.”

Behind Jeremy, Nora suddenly noticed her dark-haired apparition. Elias glowered down at her like a disappointed father.

She steeled herself.Looking down at her feet, she began to speak.

“So look, I really need—”

“Are you okay?” Jeremy cut her off.

He had completely turned towards Bonnie Bennett, who was approaching with a distant look on her face.

“I just got a weird vibe,” Bonnie replied. She didn’t even glance at Nora. “Let’s find Damon.”

The couple brushed past Nora like she was invisible, even as Elias the specter glared at them. Nora’s heart began to pound in her chest.

“Wait, this is important!” she called desperately after Jeremy.

He turned back, just momentarily, while Bonnie pushed through hobnobbing townspeople.

“Later, okay? Just give me a minute.” He disappeared into the crowd.

Nora’s eyes shut as a wave of dizziness rolled over her. She stood, blinking, as the lights in the room seemed to flare before waning. A buzzing grew in her ears.

Nora stumbled through guests until she reached a bathroom, fumbling as she locked the door.

Horror built in her as she turned with her hands out before her, feeling for the toilet half-blindly. Dark spots appeared in her vision as she sat down, feeling strangely lost in the room for all that it was in her own house.

Something is wrong, Nora realized, before she lost control of her body.

Blood was streaked over grass and clovers, dripping from a nearby tree, and filling up her mouth. It was underneath her fingernails, and the girl heard it squelch into the skin of her fingers as her hands hit the ground. Her bones snapped, her nails were growing into claws, and she felt free.

Soon, she felt her jaw lengthening, and she grinned.

She knew it must be an awful grin, sharp and bloody as her new teeth were, but she couldn't resist. She let out a wordless sound of joy, crouching in her powerful new body to sprint through the surrounding forest. She felt like a coiled spring, ready to unleash herself.

She was a wolf.

She leapt into the air–only to trip over her overlarge paws.

She skidded across the forest floor, rolling over herself a few times before she finally managed to stop her body. It was powerful, certainly, but it lacked the control she was used to having. As she attempted once again to clamber to her feet, a soft chuckle caught her attention. A chill ran down her spine. Involuntarily, she crouched low, pinning her ears back on her head. This was the alpha.

The man–for even under Maní's glow, he retained his shape as a man–reached out gently to the younger wolf. His hand brushed over her snout with a softness that belied his fondness. It was the safest she'd ever felt.

"Surely," said the manwolfalpha, "You know better than to go running off alone."

Within minutes, there was a massive creature where he stood. The girl-who-was-wolf could hardly touch the alpha's neck with the tip of her bloody snout if she tried.

Perhaps on my hind legs, she thought.

She followed the larger wolf through the woods. Listen, his ears would twist. Smell, the twitch of his nose said.

And soon enough, she could sense there was in the forest. A deer drank from water above the rushing falls. Rabbits chuffed and curled together at the trunk of a tree inhabited by crooning orioles. A few steps behind her, already smelling of rot, lay the body of the man the alpha had sentenced to death, with his unbeating heart next to it.

It's time, she thought. The hunt is on.

When she woke up, the girl could see a young man leaning over her, green eyes filled with concern.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his voice low enough not to ring through the small bathroom.

The girl blinked drowsily, slowly lifting a hand to her head. It shook with exertion, and came away red with blood.

“What happened?” she tried to ask, though only a few slurred vowels emerged from her mouth.

“Nora, are you alright?” the teen asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

Was that her name?

Slowly, she turned her head. A huge signet ring featuring a carved blue stone sat on the teenager’s index finger. His nails were clipped and free of dirt.

“Carol,” she managed to groan.

"She’s coming,” the green-eyed teen assured. “Is there anything I can do for you now?”

An overwhelming sense of shame filled the girl at this question.

He can smell it, she thought inexplicably. She swallowed slowly, trying to sit up from the tile floor where she’d been lying.

“Nora? Shoot, let me help you up,” the young man said, carefully wrapping an arm around her torso to pull her into a sitting position.

It was her name, she realized.

"Towel?” There, she’d said it without slurring.

“I only have hand towels, but I asked Damon to grab some large ones with Carol.”

Finally, Nora was able to place the green-eyed teen.

“You wanted to be a doctor,” she said, remembering a conversation from her childhood.

Stefan Salvatore’s eyes were wide when he handed her the decorative towel from the wall.

“How did you know that?”

“Zach told me,” Nora revealed, pressing the towel to her head. She chose to avoid Stefan’s eyes, looking instead at the pressed leaves Carol had framed on the bathroom wall. “I used to spend time at the boarding house with Mason.”

Stefan had nothing to say to that, and so Nora sat in silence until Carol hurried into the room with several large towels in her arms. Nora looked at her with eternal gratitude when she herded Stefan out of the room and closed the door behind him.

“I can’t believe you were left alone in here all night,” she said shakily, unfolding a darkly colored beach towel and wrapping it around Nora’s shoulders.

Promptly, Nora burst into tears.

“He could smell it,” she gasped out between sobs. “He could smell it; everyone will smell it.”

“Sweetheart, losing control of your faculties is a perfectly normal symptom of seizures; there’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Carol wet a black towel under the tap before pulling Nora to her feet, neatly dropping another where she’d been lying.

“I just—” Nora started before her voice broke off, “I feel disgusting.”

Carol turned now and looked Nora directly in the eyes, unflinching.

“You’ll feel better after a long bath upstairs,” she said, ushering the girl out of the bathroom to reveal an empty house.

“And we can watch a movie in my bed after that. I’ll ask Tyler to join us as well, since nobody exactly had the best night.”

Nora looked over at Carol, but her stepmother was determined to focus solely on the walk upstairs.

“Did something happen?”

“Aimee Bradley broke her neck,” Carol said tonelessly. “I’m afraid she’s dead.”

Chapter Text

A ritual had begun to form around Mystic Falls’ mysterious deaths.

Some of it was normal. The sirens and lights, the peace lilies on church altars, and the endless casseroles were typical markers of death in any small southern town. Even the long processions to the graveside were hardly unique, but Nora had noticed smaller things beginning to happen each time a vampire murdered a local resident.

First, a meeting would be held at her house. Nora technically wasn’t supposed to know about the Founder’s Council, but she did, and they seemed to alternate between her dining room and drawing room.

They never sat in the family room or the front parlor, and they never opened more than a single bottle of wine, which didn’t really help flesh out the cover of “dinner party” that Carol generally used to shoo away the children.

After the council met, a story would be released. Zach Salvatore went on an extended trip to Miami (admittedly, even the council had believed that one), Vicki Donovan had been attacked by an animal, and Logan Fell simply ran off.

Sometimes, the sheriff’s department made an official statement, and they occasionally pretended at investigating the deaths. Most of the time, though, it was Carol Lockwood who got the news out using her long-cultivated network of middle-aged housewives.

Nora had watched Carol drop hints and feed lies to just about every single woman in Mystic Falls, from her hairdresser to Nora’s English teacher to Matt Donovan’s third cousin. It would have been impressive if it didn’t make Nora sick.

Once rumors had been seeded in every corner of town, Carol would meet with Damon Salvatore.

Before Damon, Carol used to meet with Liz Forbes. The two women had always been the best coordinators in the council, and they’d discuss plans to root out the vampires plaguing their town before bringing said plans to each of the other members separately to maintain the group’s relative anonymity.

Nora always listened in. It was easy to eavesdrop in the Lockwood house if you knew where the old speaking tubes let out, and Nora hadn’t let Damon Salvatore’s sudden appearance in her home stop her from leaning her head into the kitchen cabinet that had been installed over the ear pieces.

She had figured it was safe. Nora wasn’t creeping about in the hallway, or peering through a keyhole, after all. Even a vampire’s senses, she had believed, would be too confused by the groaning pipes and newly installed air conditioning in the walls to hear Nora’s soft breathing and steadily increasing heart.

On Easter Sunday, though, Nora learned she was wrong.

She had been half-asleep in a pew, waiting for the midnight mass to begin, when a body slid in next to her, caging her in. Nora blinked blearily, breathing in the heady sent of beeswax and incense. The body felt real, pressing against her side, but not warm. She had never felt an apparition before, but maybe this was a first.

She curled away from the body, shifting in an attempt to stop the wooden bench beneath her from digging into her bony legs and back. Even through her wool coat and crinoline-lined easter dress, she could feel her hips grinding against her seat.

“You know something.”

Nora shot up upon hearing a voice croon threateningly in her ear. Damon Salvatore, arm laid casually along the back of the pew, smirked at her.

His brother sat beside him, concern carving lines into his forehead.

In the dim candlelight of the nave, with Simon of Cyrene portrayed in glass behind them, the Salvatore boys looked like the warring heads of angelic armies: Stefan was all consideration and righteousness and worry, his warm eyes boring into Nora’s own while Damon, callous and smug, glanced over her as if she was unworthy of his mere gaze.

Still, they clearly wanted the same thing.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, unsure what information they knew to fish for.

“You seem pretty uncomfortable,” Damon replied, leaning back and crossing his ankle over his knee, “for someone who doesn’t know what I mean.”

Stefan, on his other side, looked the picture of piety with his hands clasped before him. Nora could tell, though, that he was listening in.

“Maybe I’m uncomfortable because a grown man in his mid-twenties with a reputation for dating teenagers has cornered me,” Nora hissed back at Damon. “Given that I haven’t seen you at church once since you moved here, I could even say I feel stalked.”

Damon’s smirk momentarily shifted to a full-blown grin.

“Come on, sweetheart,” his voice took on a sing-songy tone, “you know even us lapsed Catholics come to Easter mass.”

“Then maybe you should pay attention to it and leave me alone.”

“I never said I came for Easter mass.” Damon grinned again, wolflike. His icy blue eyes glinted with a predatory gleam.

“You’re a creep,” Nora stated flatly.

“And you’re an eavesdropper,” Damon returned her blow. “You also told little Gilbert you had to tell him something at your family’s party. I’m here to collect.”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“But it does have to do with Elena, doesn’t it?” Stefan spoke now, voice heavy with sincerity. “There’s people who are after her. If there’s anything we can do to save her—”

“You need to tell us,” Damon finished, leaning in too close to Nora’s face. For a moment, he was someone else—a lost memory niggling at the back of her mind.

She shook her head, clearing the image.

“I’ll talk to Jeremy when we go back to school on Tuesday,” Nora dismissed. Jeremy was far less volatile than the vampires next to her. Nora would much rather suffer a bruised knee or cut hand from falling than a snapped neck.

“Yeah, no,” Damon snapped. “Jeremy got Elena grounded to hell and back. He got Jenna involved in this mess, he brought John Gilbert back to town, and he’s telling supernatural secrets like no tomorrow.”

Nora pursed her lips.

“Jeremy told the adults responsible for Elena’s care about the dangerous things she’s involved in,” she defended.

“And it was your idea, wasn’t it?” Damon’s tone had grown more pointed. His face was mean, sharp and pale and shadowed in the low light.

“I’m not in charge of Jeremy Gilbert,” Nora said. If only Damon knew how true that statement was.

Nora turned to face the altar as a shuffling indicated more people were joining their pew. Rather than the Fell cousins she expected, Liz Forbes was dragging Caroline behind her.

As Damon stood to greet the sheriff, Stefan slid in the spot he vacated next to Nora. She breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw he left more space than his brother.

“How are you feeling?” Stefan asked without removing his eyes from the cross above the altar.

Nora frowned, confused.

“I’m fine.” The statement came out as more of a question.

"Do you have seizures often?" Stefan's voice was calm, but warm.

"I guess," Nora said. She didn't especially care to talk about her seizures. She felt enough like the town freak without people bringing attention to her medical issues.

"I'm sorry," Stefan said quietly.

He reached over and grasped her shoulder for a moment. Nora instantly felt the gaping hole where Logan was—her uncle used to do that.

"Thanks."

Maybe the sorry could count for all of it, even if Stefan wasn't party to the years of harassment Nora had endured. Maybe just one sorry would heal the wounds left by all of the pain and death in this town, if she decided it could.

"There is one thing, though." Stefan glanced over as he spoke this time. "I don't think I ever told Zach about wanting to be a doctor."

"Did I ever tell you," Nik began, lounging across the fluffy white duvet next to Mason, "about the time I inadvertently started a plague?”

Mason snorted. It hurt his chest.

He was propped up between far too many pillows on the bed in what had been Kate’s room in Mrs. Flowers’ B&B, though he barely remembered arriving. What he did remember was Nik clucking and preening about him like some sort of brooding chicken, though the odd vampire had finally calmed now that Mason was fully awake.

“How does a vampire start a plague?” Mason asked. It wasn’t as if they could spread diseases.

“Well,” the blond said, smiling through his familiar blue eyes, “I’m afraid it wasn’t the sort of plague one would immediately consider. You have heard of the dancing plagues, though?”

Now this sounded far more plausible than the bubonic plague.

“Vaguely, yes,” Mason replied.

“Imagine, then,” Nik’s voice lowered as he began, “Strasbourg, sixteenth century. It was a remarkably boring place, you know.”

Mason nodded as if he understood.

“I made a bet with my brother about who could make the greatest ruckus, and then our eldest brother—self-righteous fool that he is—added the caveat that there could be no death or blood.”

Nik grimaced in annoyance even as his eyes gleamed with mischief.

“Kol put on an orgy,” he said, before grinning, victorious, “but I started compelling people to dance. Eventually they didn’t need to be compelled to join in. Elijah wasn’t even able to erase all of the memories.”

A laugh escaped Mason, though it quickly became a groan as a sharp pain lanced through his chest.

“You just compelled a bunch of people to dance and they called it a plague?” Mason gritted out incredulously.

“Well, given that outbreaks of dancing spread all across Europe...” Nik trailed off, smirking.

Mason could only grin back at his friend. Despite the pain, Mason felt strangely weightless. He found himself committing his surroundings to memory—the filtered sunlight, dancing dust motes, Nik’s golden curls and dimples, the fluffy white bed—all of these things filled Mason with a thrumming, warm feeling that he hadn’t felt for a very long time.

It felt like being content, and Mason hadn’t had that luxury since his first full moon.

He basked in it.

Stefan Salvatore, Nora learned, was remarkably capable of making himself a pest.

The green-eyed vampire managed to appear constantly beside her between classes, in the library, and on her daily runs. By the third day of stalking her, he’d started bringing her snacks, claiming it was her lack of nutrition that was making her grumpy. Nora’s stomach, traitor that it was, never failed to growl at the sight of his gifts.

It was embarrassing.

Still, as much as Stefan was following Nora, Jeremy was avoiding her. Every day, he dashed out of their shared classes at the speed of light, and he still refused to answer a single one of the increasingly desperate texts Nora sent him.

She knew the entire Gilbert family was on lockdown—even if Damon Salvatore hadn’t blamed Nora, of all people, for it, everyone in town was now gossiping about the situation—but really, given that Jeremy had time to be delivered a detention slip for inappropriate PDA in their physics class, Nora figured he’d have time to chat for all of five seconds.

Not that it would take five seconds to explain that her childhood friend wanted to murder Jeremy’s sister.

When Nora had decided to bite the bullet and tell someone what Nik was up to, she figured she’d be able to tell Jeremy: Jeremy, who had been surprisingly kind in the past weeks and was human, not a vampire or witch with the ability to kill Nora when their volatile emotional state exploded.

By Friday, though, Nora figured that if she couldn’t find Jeremy Gilbert, somehow couldn’t even find John Gilbert, who’d made himself a nuisance in her home at least twice a week every time he’d returned to Mystic Falls since he left for college when Nora was five, she’d have to bite the bullet another way.

She went straight to the source.

Niklaus was easy to find, lounging about with a mostly-healed Mason in the same B&B they’d found Katerina Petrova in. Nora simply took a different bus than usual while Tyler was at baseball practice. The proprietor, a friendly middle-aged woman with the faintest midwestern accent, ushered Nora into a sitting room where the vampire sat with her uncle, drinking tea from Royal Albert demitasses.

Carol had always turned her nose up at Royal Albert. Nora nearly snorted at the thought of Mrs. “Wedgwood or nothing” Lockwood sitting with the two men before her at the table, trying to be polite while ensuring Mason poured his milk first, so as not to cause the “lesser quality china” to crack from the heat.

As if sensing her thoughts, Nik smirked up at Nora from the bistro table he sat at, motioning for her to join them. In a show of old-fashioned manners, he rose to pull out her seat.

“Thank you,” Nora murmured, allowing Nik to help her to the table. The pale blue tablecloth brushed lightly against her skin below the jean shorts she wore.

Really, she wasn’t prepared for this.

“Hey, kid,” Mason greeted with a tired smile. Nora responded with one of her own, glad to see him out of bed.

“We weren’t expecting you, love,” Niklaus said, settling back into his seat.

Nora began to fiddle with the paper napkin on the table in front of her, tearing off a tiny piece from the corner. A wildly grinning vampire stood menacingly behind Nora’s uncle, fangs on display as he leaned over Mason’s throat.

Nora tried to blink the image away, rolling the bit of paper between her fingers.

The vampire remained. Nora tried not to look.

“Honoria, love, are you there?”

Nora looked at Nik, registering that he’d spoken. He and Mason both looked concerned, though it faded quickly once she made eye contact.

“Sorry,” she said. “I must have zoned out for a minute.”

“A little longer than a minute,” Mason chuckled nervously, running his hand through his brown curls. “We thought we’d lost you there.”

“Sorry,” Nora said again.

The urge to run took over.

“Can I borrow your car keys?”

Mason looked worried at the request.

“Nora, you don’t have your license.”

“You drove before you had a license,” Nora argued.

“That doesn’t mean I should let you.” Mason leaned back in his seat. “Carol would kill me.”

“Use mine,” Niklaus said. Nora could only blink as he pulled a set of keys out of his jeans pocket.

“This way,” he continued, smirking, “Carol can’t get mad at you, can she, mate?”

Mason just shrugged, though Nora could still see some small amount of parental disapproval in his eyes.

“Guess not,” he said.

Virginia Beach was a bit of a party town on Friday nights, Nora knew, but she’d luckily managed to find a bit of peace on its actual shores.

Away from the tourist shops and clubs, away from the drunken spring breakers, Nora was able to sit and breathe in the sea air. There was something in it, despite all of the pollution, that was pure in a way that Willow Creek and even the falls her town was named for never could be. It wasn’t crisp, not like freshwater, but it was pure.

The salt in the air smelled of adventure and new life, of memories Nora had never had but desperately wanted. Nora had dreamed of glimpses of the sea shining beneath her as she sailed from Cadiz, waving to the other vessels at the busy harbor.

But Nora had also never been to Cadiz, or to Spain at all.

She’d never been to Thessaloniki, either, but Nora had been able to draw the old churches there from memory. She’d offered it up as proof, once, that she’d seen something more, but even Tyler had laughed at that attempt.

So Nora kept thoughts of Cadiz away, for all that she enjoyed the salt air, and meditated instead on her current dilemma. It wasn’t that there was no solution—it was clear, at this point, that finding a way to save Elena Gilbert from being killed (at least permanently killed, Nora still wanted Nik to get what he wanted) was the right thing to do.

Nora was just a coward.

If she’d been braver, Nora would have told Sheila Bennet the things she knew half a decade ago, but she’d been too afraid of the old witch’s granddaughter. If she’d been braver, she could have told Damon or Stefan or even Caroline Forbes about Nik’s plans but she’d insisted on speaking to Jeremy and Jeremy alone, and now they had only three weeks until the full moon. If nore were braver, she’d have put her own body between Nik and Mason before telling him that she thought his plan was wrong.

Of course, she’d done none of that, and she’d hardly even researched resuscitation from magical sacrifice on her own, either.

Nora hated herself, then, and wished that the gentle lapping of the waves at her feet, at the very least, could be harsher. Even the mild, balmy winds seemed far to kind a fate for Nora’s horrible cowardice, for her inability to move in any direction.

“Eudokia,” she heard over the breeze.

Nora turned, though it was not her name, for it was terribly familiar. A ringing grew in her left ear.

“Elias,” she breathed out. Her hallucination stood before her in a shockingly modern suit, the twill weave of his gabardine suit far too heavy for the evening’s warm weather.

His hair is shorter, Nora thought. She tilted her head at the apparition in front of her, unsure what it was trying to tell her.

“You know, I really wish I knew what to do,” she said to the apparition. “If I get involved, chances are I get eaten by a vampire. But even if I don’t get involved, I’m probably getting eaten by a vampire.”

Elias merely stood, stone-faced and unanswering.

“The thing is, even if I know it’s the right thing, I really don’t want to sacrifice myself to save Elena Gilbert,” Nora hastened on. “I don’t even really want to save Elena Gilbert; I just don’t want her to die. I don’t want anyone to die, really, but I still—”

“Eudokia,” a gasping, hollow imitation of a voice emerged from Elias’ mouth, “Eudokia, find me.”

Nora gaped, horrified, as the man before her stumbled forward and vanished.

Chapter Text

Nora was somewhat shocked when Matt Donovan cornered her after Sunday mass.

Yes, she was a reliable attendee, but it was really starting to grate on her. First Damon, and now Matt—and Matt could have just called her like a normal human being! It wasn’t as if he didn’t have her phone number.

Matt probably had Jeremy Gilbert’s phone number, now that Nora thought about it.

But when he grabbed Nora by the arm, pulling her into an apse as she tried to follow Tina out of the nave, she was surprised. And when she really looked at him—messy hair, rumpled shirt, dark circles around his eyes—she was even more surprised.

Matt Donovan never looked like this. Not even when Elena Gilbert had dumped him, almost a year ago.

“What are you doing?” Nora gazed up at Matt, noticing that his eyes were even bloodshot.

A tingling pressure began to build at the base of her skull.

“Um. Can I.” Matt stuttered over his words, abruptly letting go of Nora’s arm to scratch the back of his head. “Can I give you a ride home? I just really need to talk to someone, and I just…”

He took another step back after trailing off.

Nora let out a soft breath, relaxing. She hadn’t even realized it was building.

“Of course, sure. You look… you look like you could use it.”

And use it he did. Matt barely managed to shut the door to his truck before he burst into tears.

Nora sat awkwardly, wringing her hands together in her lap.

Obviously, something had happened over the last few days, but what? Matt was quite possibly the most stable person Nora knew. While Tyler went out partying and Blair and Tina allowed themselves to go on post-breakup retail therapy sprees, Matt had always been responsible and calm. Matt worked a full-time job, played varsity football, got straight-As and volunteered at church as well as for several other organizations. Matt was the guy who somehow, amid all the chaos of his world, actually had it all together.

He didn’t cry next to Nora in the car.

Eventually, the tears ebbed, leaving Matt to blink up at Nora, still bloodshot eyes red-rimmed. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was on some sort of drug.

“I’m sorry for ambushing you like this,” he finally spoke. “It’s just, I don’t know who else to talk to. I can’t trust Elena, because she and Caroline are friends, and Sheriff Forbes didn’t know what to do either, and Tyler is just fully missing—”

“What? Tyler is missing?” Nora cut him off.

No one had told her that her brother was missing.

“Not missing missing,” Matt corrected. “He left a note. It’s only been a week.”

“Oh, okay.”

Unfortunately, leaving for a week with only a note was, in fact, fairly typical Tyler behavior. Nora didn’t know how he hadn’t run through his trust fund yet, given the way he treated school days and breaks alike as opportunities to jet off on a moment’s notice.

Usually, he a least tried to get Matt to go with him, though.

“So, Caroline?” Nora tried to resume the conversation.

A wrinkle formed between Matt’s eyebrows as they scrunched together.

“How did you know?”

“You said you talked to her mom.”

It was also the number one thing Matt wanted to talk to Nora about, lately. She wasn’t sure how she’d become his sounding board for romance, given her less than zero experience.

Matt turned back to the wheel, placing his face in his hands. His knees rose up to support them.

He looked so much younger that way. Nora wanted to hug Matt like he used to hug her when she was little and skinned her knee, but she held herself back as he unfurled, still facing the car’s windshield.

“Do you ever think,” he paused, gulping, “that there’s more to the stuff that happens in Mystic Falls? Like all the deaths and stuff?”

Nora blinked. That was not where she thought this conversation would be going.

“I’m sorry, what?”

Matt’s head whipped around to face her. His eyes narrowed.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what does this have to do with Caroline?”

“It’s — can you just answer the question, Nora?”

Nora found herself gulping now, imitating Matt’s actions just moments earlier.

“Um, yes?” She didn’t know the right answer to give in this situation.

Matt sighed.

“Yes because you know about it, or?” He trailed off there.

Nora looked at her hands, clenched together as they sat in the fabric of her green skirt.

“The, uh,” she had to take a guess here, “the founders stuff?”

“More like the thing the founders keep secret from the rest of us stuff,” Matt snorted bitterly.

“I’m sorry, but I still don’t see how Caroline factors into this. Did her mom decide to tell her about them or something?”

Matt turned back to look out the windshield.

“No, she’s one of them. Caroline is a vampire.”

“Oh.”

Then, feeling awkward, she added, “I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.

“I just — I can’t believe there’s been all of this stuff happening and I’ve been so blind to it. I mean, with Vicki. I actually believed she was bitten by an animal. She told me!”

And then gesturing at Nora, “And you told me! God, you’ve been saying stuff since you were what? Seven?”

Nora looked out the window, inexplicably guilty.

“Longer.”

“How did you know? Did you actually know?”

“Honestly?”

Matt nodded emphatically.

“I just knew, one day. I heard the council talking in my house, and that night I had this dream, and I knew they weren’t just playing pretend.”

Matt looked vaguely horrified.

“So, this whole time, Nutty Nora?”

“Wasn’t so nuts.”

Matt barked out a short laugh.

“It wasn’t confirmed until later though,” Nora continued. “I met someone who I thought I used to know, and he knew me, and given that he looked exactly the same as he did in my dreams and hadn’t aged, I figured the whole vampirism thing out pretty quickly.”

“Wait, you talked to a vampire?”

“We’re friends, kind of. I’m starting to think he likes Mason more than me.”

“Huh.”

Nora looked over at Matt, watching him pick at his thumb. It was an old nervous habit. One she hadn’t seen in years.

“You know, vampires aren’t inherently bad.” She wasn’t sure which of the two of them she was trying to convince, Matt or herself. “I mean, in our modern western society the degree of bloodshed involved frankly doesn’t line up with the stuff they did a lot in, say, the Middle Ages, but last I heard, Caroline wasn’t out burning and slaughtering villages.”

And lately, neither was Nik. Hopefully.

“No, she’s not,” Matt confirmed. “The only reason I even found out—well, this crazy guy came into the Grill trying to kill Elena. Caroline saved my life.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, apparently he was a warlock or wizard or something.”

“Trying to kill Elena?”

“Wild, right?”

Nora nodded.

“To say the least.” She didn’t envy Elena being hunted down by crazy warlocks.

“So, with Caroline?” she asked Matt.

“I still really like her,” he admitted. “I feel betrayed that she hid all of this from me, but when I really asked she told the truth, and when I asked her to erase my memories she did. Or, she thought she did.

“Which is why it feels like I’m betraying her too,” Matt continued. "I told her mom everything.”

“Oh.”

Yeah, Nora wasn’t touching that with a 10-foot pole.

“And Sheriff Forbes doesn’t know what to do. I mean, finding out your only child is an undead monster you spent your life preparing to hunt…”

“Well, what do you want to do?” Nora asked. “Are you going to keep pretending you don’t know anything?”

She was pretty sure that’s what Matt meant.

Matt brushed his hair back, ruffling it further.

“It’s easier, right? I don’t have to get involved in all that crazy stuff.”

Nora smiled bitterly.

“I think you’re already involved in all the crazy stuff.”

Matt sighed.

“You’re right,” he said. “Open communication is better.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Speaking of wants,” Matt said, turning his torso to face Nora fully, “do you want to grab some ice cream? I could kind of use some sugar after the night I’ve had.”

“Sounds good to me,” Nora shrugged.

Tyler didn’t answer the phone.

It was strange — he’d kept a presence up on the family group chat, which mostly consisted of pictures or tweets one member or another found funny, with a side of family announcements.

Looking at it, Nora realized they were still sending texts to her dad’s number. That was vaguely depressing.

By the time Carol got home, Nora had tried every way she could think of to talk to her brother: once calls and texts bounced, she’d emailed and messaged him on Facebook, and even pulled up her old AOL instant messaging account in hopes that by some fluke, he’d be online.

Carol was placing grocery bags on the kitchen island when Nora walked into the room.

“Hey, sweetheart,” she said, smiling at Nora, “can you stick the milk in the fridge?”

Nora retrieved the plastic gallon jug from the island.

“Hey, so,” Nora began as she opened the fridge, “Matt said Tyler has been gone for a week?”

Carol kept her eyes on the groceries she was sorting and handed Nora two blocks of cheese.

“After the last few months, we thought it might be best he had a break,” she said.

“But AP tests are this month.” Nora stowed away a head of romaine lettuce in the produce drawer. “And doesn’t he have that big baseball tournament?”

Tyler’s approach to the constant angry energy he and Nora had both inherited was to try to get it out with exercise. He played three varsity sports, one for each season, whereas Nora simply tried to ensure she never built enough muscle to truly harm someone. There was brainfog and missing days, sure, but it wasn’t like she wasn’t already being constantly analyzed and supervised by doctors.

Carol stopped stacking boxes of snacks and looked up at Nora.

“Tyler…” She paused to swallow. “Tyler shouldn’t be in town right now. It’s only for a few weeks, but it’s best that he stay out of the way while things calm down.”

Nora turned to Carol, then, shutting the refrigerator behind her.

“What things?”

What had Tyler involved himself in?

“Well, with the Bradley case,” Carol planted her hands on the island, “the parents are asking for a more in-depth report from the medical examiner. They don’t appear to believe it was an accident.”

“That’s awful, but what does it have to do with Tyler?”

“It was an accident; it was,” Carol’s arms bent and straightened as she braced herself further. “They were all drunk; it was just…”

Oh.

Oh.

Nora’s lips rounded. Her hand came up to her mouth involuntarily.

Tyler, her impulsive but ever-loving brother, had killed someone. Not just that, but someone they knew—and Carol had covered it up.

She felt nauseous.

“I’m going —” she cut herself off. “I’m going to go finish some homework for tomorrow.”

She fled before Carol could respond.