The Pitchfork Play (Not) Its Part Well [The Vampire Diaries, Gen, Complete]
Title: The Pitchfork Play (Not) Its Part Well
Author: havocthecat
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries (tv)
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Characters: Liz Forbes, Caroline Forbes, Bonnie Bennett, Damon Salvatore
Warnings: None
Summary: Liz Forbes looks past what the Founders Council has always known. Post-Kill or Be Killed.
Author's Notes: Thank you to monanotlisa and sabaceanbabe for lending a hand and betareading!
And I can imagine how
that busy pitchfork there must
feel, just doing the job
that the Devil and destiny
created for it, as it enforces
the laws of punishment,
and must remain pitiless,
because it has the dark heart
or, of course, is heartless.
Isn’t that the point here,
the plan for justice, that the
pitchfork play its part well?
--The Philosophy of Pitchforks, by Sue Owen.
***
The vervain clears its way out of Liz's system in three days. What no one expects is that Liz has a tiny bottle of vervain stashed in her bra. They don't search her. She laughs a little, fumbling as she pulls it out on day three of her captivity. It's something Jenna Sommers would do. Has done, as a matter of fact, back in the days before she was forced into early responsibility, though Jenna was only hiding pot, not vampire poison.
She unscrews the cap and tosses it back before someone can come down to investigate, then shatters the tiny glass bottle under her sensible Sheriff Foster shoes, the ones Caroline made fun of when she bought them.
She sobers at the thought. Caroline. She wants to grow old watching her daughter grow up. Prom. College. A career. She's been waiting for the time after Caroline grows out of the awkward teenage years so they can be friends. Can be something more to each other than mother and daughter fumbling at an intimacy that's so easy for Caroline to achieve with her father.
That's all gone, and she doesn't know when or how or why. She spends her nights sleepless and hollow-eyed, staring at the walls of her prison. Damon tries to talk to her; she doesn't want to speak. Everything she has is gone. Everything except her job.
She's in police work because it's part of the family legacy, just like serving on the Founders Council. She's been taught that vampires are evil creatures, soulless shadows of the people they used to be. She's been taught that they do nothing but kill, especially when their secret is on the line.
Liz is alive because three vampires chose to spare her life. She isn't the kind of person to make the same choice. She'd have killed them, not without remorse, but they'd still be dead.
Why are the Lockwoods always the head of the Council? Why are the Gilberts always backing them? For that matter, what are both of those families hiding?
When Damon compels her to forget, Liz nods and smiles, playing along as the innocent vampire victim. Her stomach turns at the thought of what he and his brother are. If the Salvatores can keep this secret for a century and a half, who's to say the Lockwoods and the Gilberts haven't been keeping their own secrets for just as long?
She's deposited at home, and Caroline avoids her. Liz pretends she doesn't know why, all the while trying to learn how Caroline can go out and about during the day. Liz uses everything she can about Caroline to find out what she knows. It's all secrets and lies and arguments, with Liz watching for when Caroline covers something up.
They take baby steps, move closer to an intimacy that Liz doesn't want any more, because Caroline can't lie about anything. Liz always knows when Caroline isn't telling the truth.
At night, Liz twists her hands in her sheets so tight she wakes up with red marks on her fingers, and does her best to mourn a daughter who'll be at the breakfast table bright and early.
This isn't something she should keep from the Founders Council, but she does. When she shows up for meetings, with Damon smiling and acting like he hasn't violated her mind, Liz smiles right back, even though her stomach turns and she has to choke back bile. She says all the right things, and, if she looks distracted, she passes it off as lingering bad feelings from a fight with Caroline earlier that day.
It's easy for everyone to believe, because she's always fighting with Caroline. Has always fought with Caroline, for as long as she can remember.
There's one thing that everyone, the Fosters included, have forgotten over the years. Being sheriff in a town where the Fosters are always the law is powerful. No one tells her deputies what to do, and Liz hand picks her staff from the most trusted newcomers in town. No one has to have founding family blood to have a job in Liz's department.
She calls a department-wide meeting. The council thinks it's to update her staff on the progress of the local vampire hunt. Carol Lockwood wants to be present as acting mayor, but Liz tells Carol it's about paperwork and schedules it when Carol has a meeting with the governor. If there's one thing Carol Lockwood puts above everything else, it's keeping the name of Mystic Falls untarnished in Richard's memory.
Liz's deputies have her absolute trust. No one else in this godforsaken town does. Not any more. She sends her higher-level officers on their off hours to hunt out old books. She pores over the archives at the library when Caroline is at school. She gets Tina Fell, who's an intern at the local news company Logan used to work at, to let her into the news archives. Tina's more calm now that Logan is gone. She's almost eighteen, nearly old enough to find out about the Founders Council.
Everything that Liz finds horrifies her more than the news her daughter is a vampire. How is it that the Salvatore brothers have been coming back to Mystic Falls for a century and a half and no one has figured it out? Are they all that stupid?
While her deputies and officers start hunting down journals, even stealing them from Founders Council homes if they have to, Liz tracks down a source of vervain that's not dependent on Damon Salvatore. She's compared new and old samples, and she's pretty sure he's started watering it down since the historical society's volunteer picnic.
The only sources she can find are on the internet, because there's no local vervain, not for a hundred miles or more. This means Liz upgrades her internet connection from the dial-up that Caroline always complains about to something faster, and buys herself a laptop and a portable scanner to keep in her bedroom. She doesn't know the first thing about security, but that's why she hires an expert from Washington D.C. and tells him to pretend he's from a nearby computer shop.
Her computer isn't unhackable - uncrackable is maybe the right word, she has no idea what to do about all this stuff - but Caroline won't be able to get onto it easily. She also has him install a key logger onto Caroline's computer. If her daughter can become a vampire without her knowledge, what else is Caroline up to?
That's when it hits her that she still thinks of Caroline as her daughter, and not just a vampire. Liz curses herself for being weak, and curses herself for not being able to kill her daughter. She shakes her head, grimacing at herself, then moves on, because there's nothing else to be done.
In bits and pieces, her deputies bring her journals, artifacts, anything they can find about the bad times. Liz scans everything in, something she still hates to do, and saves them all to an extremely large external hard drive. The cost came out of her personal bank account, not the Founders Council budget.
If there's anything Liz wants, it's not to get caught again.
She spends time with Damon, even enjoys it, and hates herself more, both for deceiving him and for enjoying his friendship. He's the only one that she tells about her rocky relationship with Caroline. He offers advice and acts like he cares. She sees Stefan and Caroline take walks in the forest, listens to reports of dead animals that are drained of blood. Animals, not people.
Liz is confused. This isn't what she expects of vampires. It's not what she knows, hell, it's not even her experience when they first came to town. Her deputies cover everything up, and Liz brings the reports to Carol herself. Carol never questions this, because she likes to feel important. Hell, she's a Lockwood. She is important. Liz still only tells Carol what she thinks Carol needs to know.
Shoved on the back shelves of the library archives, there's a box of genealogical society papers that have been forgotten for years. Liz finds those and brings them home, because no one questions the town sheriff. It's an abuse of her power, but it's necessitated by the secrets everyone else is keeping.
It's the Bennett family history. Someone wanted it hidden. That's the only reason it would be shoved in the back corner of the storeroom under Mystic Falls High School's yearbook collection.
Reading through it, Liz is horrified. Her ancestors weren't journal keepers and chroniclers, and she's appalled by what she's been in ignorance of. It's so much.
Like the Bennetts. The Bennett family has been in town as long as any of the rest of them. She finds out that Emily Bennett and her brother were slaves belonging to Katherine Pierce. Well-dressed, well-treated - as well as any slave would be back then, which is probably to say not very, but Liz was taught not to think about those things - but slaves nevertheless.
She finds ownership papers, and her stomach turns even more. The founding families didn't set any of the slaves belonging to the Fell's Church vampires free. Those actions affect them, even today. Sheila Bennett was a respected professor at a nearby college before she passed, knowledgeable in the occult and local history, but she's never been a part of the inner workings of Mystic Falls.
They don't invite the Bennetts to join the Founders Council. They don't invite them to participate in the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, or to join in the parade that's held every year. The Bennetts are kept apart and have been for decades, in a deliberate program of segregation instituted by the original Founders Council.
This isn't the liberal whining her father would have despised. This is absolute shame at what she hasn't done or hasn't known. What she hasn't wanted to know. Maybe she's not as open-minded about who she hires as a deputy as she thinks.
She digs more, and finds out that Emily Bennett was burned at the stake. Alive. For witchcraft. Salem's the only witch trial that's made its way into this country's history books. The fact that they had one here in Mystic Falls and the only person killed was black is bad enough. The fact that her ancestors were the law in town, that they had to be the ones who carried out that death sentence gives Liz a migraine that lasts for a week.
Caroline balks at Liz and her sunglasses, alternately sniping and fussing at the news that Liz has a weakness she's willing to admit to. Liz rolls her eyes and winces at the pain before popping the sumatriptan that Caroline hands her.
She doesn't even wonder if her vampire daughter is about to poison her or drink her blood. She even, God help her, thinks Caroline cares how Liz feels. If there's a hell, she's going to burn in it for sure.
After Liz has all the information she can find, she gets into uniform. It's armor, more bone-deep than the kevlar vest, and she needs to feel secure. She goes over to Bonnie Bennett's house, the one Sheila left her, and knocks on the door.
When Bonnie answers, she frowns. "Sheriff Forbes?" she says. "Can I help you with something?"
There's no one around. Liz is the kind of police officer who scouts the area before she moves in and does her job. That's why she can do this.
She can. She takes a deep breath and lets it out in an explosive sigh. It's about time they pulled their collective heads out of the sand. If Liz has to be the one to start, so be it.
"I'm here to talk to you about the vampires, Bonnie," says Liz, her voice grave. "And about the witchcraft."
"I'm sorry, Sheriff Forbes, I don't--" begins Bonnie.
"I know about Caroline," says Liz, her head held high even as her voice breaks. "This isn't official Founders Council business."
Bonnie nods once, slowly, and opens the door wide. She doesn't say a word.
Liz steps inside.
--end--
Author: havocthecat
Fandom: The Vampire Diaries (tv)
Rating: PG
Pairing: None
Characters: Liz Forbes, Caroline Forbes, Bonnie Bennett, Damon Salvatore
Warnings: None
Summary: Liz Forbes looks past what the Founders Council has always known. Post-Kill or Be Killed.
Author's Notes: Thank you to monanotlisa and sabaceanbabe for lending a hand and betareading!
And I can imagine how
that busy pitchfork there must
feel, just doing the job
that the Devil and destiny
created for it, as it enforces
the laws of punishment,
and must remain pitiless,
because it has the dark heart
or, of course, is heartless.
Isn’t that the point here,
the plan for justice, that the
pitchfork play its part well?
--The Philosophy of Pitchforks, by Sue Owen.
***
The vervain clears its way out of Liz's system in three days. What no one expects is that Liz has a tiny bottle of vervain stashed in her bra. They don't search her. She laughs a little, fumbling as she pulls it out on day three of her captivity. It's something Jenna Sommers would do. Has done, as a matter of fact, back in the days before she was forced into early responsibility, though Jenna was only hiding pot, not vampire poison.
She unscrews the cap and tosses it back before someone can come down to investigate, then shatters the tiny glass bottle under her sensible Sheriff Foster shoes, the ones Caroline made fun of when she bought them.
She sobers at the thought. Caroline. She wants to grow old watching her daughter grow up. Prom. College. A career. She's been waiting for the time after Caroline grows out of the awkward teenage years so they can be friends. Can be something more to each other than mother and daughter fumbling at an intimacy that's so easy for Caroline to achieve with her father.
That's all gone, and she doesn't know when or how or why. She spends her nights sleepless and hollow-eyed, staring at the walls of her prison. Damon tries to talk to her; she doesn't want to speak. Everything she has is gone. Everything except her job.
She's in police work because it's part of the family legacy, just like serving on the Founders Council. She's been taught that vampires are evil creatures, soulless shadows of the people they used to be. She's been taught that they do nothing but kill, especially when their secret is on the line.
Liz is alive because three vampires chose to spare her life. She isn't the kind of person to make the same choice. She'd have killed them, not without remorse, but they'd still be dead.
Why are the Lockwoods always the head of the Council? Why are the Gilberts always backing them? For that matter, what are both of those families hiding?
When Damon compels her to forget, Liz nods and smiles, playing along as the innocent vampire victim. Her stomach turns at the thought of what he and his brother are. If the Salvatores can keep this secret for a century and a half, who's to say the Lockwoods and the Gilberts haven't been keeping their own secrets for just as long?
She's deposited at home, and Caroline avoids her. Liz pretends she doesn't know why, all the while trying to learn how Caroline can go out and about during the day. Liz uses everything she can about Caroline to find out what she knows. It's all secrets and lies and arguments, with Liz watching for when Caroline covers something up.
They take baby steps, move closer to an intimacy that Liz doesn't want any more, because Caroline can't lie about anything. Liz always knows when Caroline isn't telling the truth.
At night, Liz twists her hands in her sheets so tight she wakes up with red marks on her fingers, and does her best to mourn a daughter who'll be at the breakfast table bright and early.
This isn't something she should keep from the Founders Council, but she does. When she shows up for meetings, with Damon smiling and acting like he hasn't violated her mind, Liz smiles right back, even though her stomach turns and she has to choke back bile. She says all the right things, and, if she looks distracted, she passes it off as lingering bad feelings from a fight with Caroline earlier that day.
It's easy for everyone to believe, because she's always fighting with Caroline. Has always fought with Caroline, for as long as she can remember.
There's one thing that everyone, the Fosters included, have forgotten over the years. Being sheriff in a town where the Fosters are always the law is powerful. No one tells her deputies what to do, and Liz hand picks her staff from the most trusted newcomers in town. No one has to have founding family blood to have a job in Liz's department.
She calls a department-wide meeting. The council thinks it's to update her staff on the progress of the local vampire hunt. Carol Lockwood wants to be present as acting mayor, but Liz tells Carol it's about paperwork and schedules it when Carol has a meeting with the governor. If there's one thing Carol Lockwood puts above everything else, it's keeping the name of Mystic Falls untarnished in Richard's memory.
Liz's deputies have her absolute trust. No one else in this godforsaken town does. Not any more. She sends her higher-level officers on their off hours to hunt out old books. She pores over the archives at the library when Caroline is at school. She gets Tina Fell, who's an intern at the local news company Logan used to work at, to let her into the news archives. Tina's more calm now that Logan is gone. She's almost eighteen, nearly old enough to find out about the Founders Council.
Everything that Liz finds horrifies her more than the news her daughter is a vampire. How is it that the Salvatore brothers have been coming back to Mystic Falls for a century and a half and no one has figured it out? Are they all that stupid?
While her deputies and officers start hunting down journals, even stealing them from Founders Council homes if they have to, Liz tracks down a source of vervain that's not dependent on Damon Salvatore. She's compared new and old samples, and she's pretty sure he's started watering it down since the historical society's volunteer picnic.
The only sources she can find are on the internet, because there's no local vervain, not for a hundred miles or more. This means Liz upgrades her internet connection from the dial-up that Caroline always complains about to something faster, and buys herself a laptop and a portable scanner to keep in her bedroom. She doesn't know the first thing about security, but that's why she hires an expert from Washington D.C. and tells him to pretend he's from a nearby computer shop.
Her computer isn't unhackable - uncrackable is maybe the right word, she has no idea what to do about all this stuff - but Caroline won't be able to get onto it easily. She also has him install a key logger onto Caroline's computer. If her daughter can become a vampire without her knowledge, what else is Caroline up to?
That's when it hits her that she still thinks of Caroline as her daughter, and not just a vampire. Liz curses herself for being weak, and curses herself for not being able to kill her daughter. She shakes her head, grimacing at herself, then moves on, because there's nothing else to be done.
In bits and pieces, her deputies bring her journals, artifacts, anything they can find about the bad times. Liz scans everything in, something she still hates to do, and saves them all to an extremely large external hard drive. The cost came out of her personal bank account, not the Founders Council budget.
If there's anything Liz wants, it's not to get caught again.
She spends time with Damon, even enjoys it, and hates herself more, both for deceiving him and for enjoying his friendship. He's the only one that she tells about her rocky relationship with Caroline. He offers advice and acts like he cares. She sees Stefan and Caroline take walks in the forest, listens to reports of dead animals that are drained of blood. Animals, not people.
Liz is confused. This isn't what she expects of vampires. It's not what she knows, hell, it's not even her experience when they first came to town. Her deputies cover everything up, and Liz brings the reports to Carol herself. Carol never questions this, because she likes to feel important. Hell, she's a Lockwood. She is important. Liz still only tells Carol what she thinks Carol needs to know.
Shoved on the back shelves of the library archives, there's a box of genealogical society papers that have been forgotten for years. Liz finds those and brings them home, because no one questions the town sheriff. It's an abuse of her power, but it's necessitated by the secrets everyone else is keeping.
It's the Bennett family history. Someone wanted it hidden. That's the only reason it would be shoved in the back corner of the storeroom under Mystic Falls High School's yearbook collection.
Reading through it, Liz is horrified. Her ancestors weren't journal keepers and chroniclers, and she's appalled by what she's been in ignorance of. It's so much.
Like the Bennetts. The Bennett family has been in town as long as any of the rest of them. She finds out that Emily Bennett and her brother were slaves belonging to Katherine Pierce. Well-dressed, well-treated - as well as any slave would be back then, which is probably to say not very, but Liz was taught not to think about those things - but slaves nevertheless.
She finds ownership papers, and her stomach turns even more. The founding families didn't set any of the slaves belonging to the Fell's Church vampires free. Those actions affect them, even today. Sheila Bennett was a respected professor at a nearby college before she passed, knowledgeable in the occult and local history, but she's never been a part of the inner workings of Mystic Falls.
They don't invite the Bennetts to join the Founders Council. They don't invite them to participate in the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, or to join in the parade that's held every year. The Bennetts are kept apart and have been for decades, in a deliberate program of segregation instituted by the original Founders Council.
This isn't the liberal whining her father would have despised. This is absolute shame at what she hasn't done or hasn't known. What she hasn't wanted to know. Maybe she's not as open-minded about who she hires as a deputy as she thinks.
She digs more, and finds out that Emily Bennett was burned at the stake. Alive. For witchcraft. Salem's the only witch trial that's made its way into this country's history books. The fact that they had one here in Mystic Falls and the only person killed was black is bad enough. The fact that her ancestors were the law in town, that they had to be the ones who carried out that death sentence gives Liz a migraine that lasts for a week.
Caroline balks at Liz and her sunglasses, alternately sniping and fussing at the news that Liz has a weakness she's willing to admit to. Liz rolls her eyes and winces at the pain before popping the sumatriptan that Caroline hands her.
She doesn't even wonder if her vampire daughter is about to poison her or drink her blood. She even, God help her, thinks Caroline cares how Liz feels. If there's a hell, she's going to burn in it for sure.
After Liz has all the information she can find, she gets into uniform. It's armor, more bone-deep than the kevlar vest, and she needs to feel secure. She goes over to Bonnie Bennett's house, the one Sheila left her, and knocks on the door.
When Bonnie answers, she frowns. "Sheriff Forbes?" she says. "Can I help you with something?"
There's no one around. Liz is the kind of police officer who scouts the area before she moves in and does her job. That's why she can do this.
She can. She takes a deep breath and lets it out in an explosive sigh. It's about time they pulled their collective heads out of the sand. If Liz has to be the one to start, so be it.
"I'm here to talk to you about the vampires, Bonnie," says Liz, her voice grave. "And about the witchcraft."
"I'm sorry, Sheriff Forbes, I don't--" begins Bonnie.
"I know about Caroline," says Liz, her head held high even as her voice breaks. "This isn't official Founders Council business."
Bonnie nods once, slowly, and opens the door wide. She doesn't say a word.
Liz steps inside.
--end--