fic: you wanted happiness (I can’t blame you for that)
title: you wanted happiness (I can’t blame you for that)
fandom: tvd/dw fusion (light on dw canon)
characters: amara, tatia, katherine, elena (and lots of canon “companions”)
disclaimer: I own nothing, including pieces that were from canon/allude to canon.
summary: “You’re special, different. That must have a name.” He says and it’s with such childhood innocence. It’s familiar, it reminds her of before. “I’m a Petrova,” Elena tells him and he nods. As if it’s just that easy, as though he understands. Everything has a name after all.
a/n: written for the au prompt doppelgangers are timelords that got stuck in my head. and I blame fluffyfrolicker and her ficathon for this. so should all of you.
Amara is the first.
(She will also be the last but she will never learn that. Her face will, her body will, her memories will, but Amara will be gone.)
She is made of clay and mud. The pieces crack around her, fall to the ground, until she is left standing. Flesh and bone. Thought and creation.
Amara is beautiful, shiny, and new. (They tell her this, as they surround her. Grown up and new, young and foolish, and beautifully naive.)
It has been such a long time since someone new had arrived.
They surround her and they talk, but she hears something above their voices, hears something, someone, whispering to her. “I’ve been waiting for you, my beautiful darling.”
That is the voice she listens to.
That is the voice she will always remember.
That is the voice she belongs to.
--
Tatia is made of the dust that Amara leaves behind.
Dust and wind, forming a girl. She wears the same face, has the memories of her life before, but she is different.
She is stronger in different places.
She is weaker in others.
Tatia is new. She is beautiful. She is shiny and new.
But that will tarnish. (It always does.)
She hears the cries from far away. A family full of them, full of anguish and pain, full of want and fear. She hears a family.
(She has never had one before.)
Tatia will fly to the ground and follow the voices. She will find them.
--
Amara leaves.
She follows the voice that beckons her so, that entices her. It promises her the universe, the world (any world she would like), freedom; the life she has always dreamed of. (Dreamed of even when she did not yet exist. Funny how the universe works like that.)
She follows the beckoning voice and she is gone, she leaves the fleeting world she was just beginning to know behind her.
Amara leaves and she does not look back. Not for a very long time.
--
Katerina is made of blood.
It swirls and swirls until it makes the form of a girl with a face the world (the universe) has seen before (and before).
She is made of blood and vengeance and she is perhaps the most human of all those who have come before her.
Blood and vengeance.
Such human things.
Hunger and want, she has those too.
In fact Katerina cannot think of a thing that she does not want. Not one single thing.
--
Amara crashes from the heavens to the Earth.
She is not used to this yet. She is still new. Perhaps she will never truly learn.
It is a man who finds her. Wide green eyes and wonder in his face. “Are you okay?” He asks.
“I…I am fine.” Amara says and she wonders if this is the first time someone has heard her speak. She knows the words, they are all there in her head, swirling around and around. Words, numbers, dates and times; they are there. She was born with them in her mind.
The man takes her back to his village, to his betrothed, telling her of what happened. Of the girl who had fallen from the sky.
Amara thinks that maybe these can be friends (she has never, truly, had friends before).
Amara thinks maybe these two can be the ones to come with her.
She is lonely as she travels. Has no one to talk back to her. (The voice that had once beckoned her has disappeared. Amara can’t hear it anymore.)
She looks back and forth between them, love shining in Qetsiyah’s eyes, and she thinks that perhaps this had been what she was looking for when she stole herself away.
Love.
--
Katherine travels and leaves lives ruined in her wake.
(She is made of blood and want and that is what it does. It ruins others. It ruins her.)
Ruin lies in her wake as she tries to find her place. Bodies and cities left to burn as she tries and she tries.
“Katerina, please, don’t do this.” Rosemary says, Trevor behind her too besotted, too brokenhearted.
Katherine does not look back.
“We must leave, they know.” Pearl tells her.
Katherine does not leave. Pearl will die in a fire and Katherine will not be there to see it. Pearl’s daughter will though.
“Monster.” Anna will spit the words out at her, hundreds of years later.
“Yes,” Elena will smile, “I suppose I am.”
--
Elena is made of fire, forged from it.
She comes out strong as steel, shaped like all those who have come before her. Beautiful, shiny, and new. (Though not new enough.)
She is made of fire, it burns within her, burns with anger, with hunger, with love, with want.
It burns and burns and burns.
She does not know what to do to put it out.
Elena plunges herself into the coldest of waters and it does not do a thing.
--
Tatia finds the family easily.
She does not hear their voices, but she can hear them calling out to her, even if they do not realize what they are doing. She finds them and she sets out to make them happy again.
(An impossible mission for an impossible girl.)
They stay in their little village for a time.
Rebekah will teach her how to braid her hair and how to carve her name into the cavern walls. Tatia will dance by the fire barefoot with Niklaus, with Elijah. She will play hide and seek with Kol and Henrik.
Tatia will laugh and smile and hold out her hands to each of them invitingly. They will all stare at her. Like she is something new.
(Instead of the truth. That she is something old. She is something new and old and nothing like them at all.)
“I’m happy.” She tells Elijah as she sips at her wine.
“Is that new to you?” He asks.
“Yes, new to me.” Tatia says, though she has memories of happiness in her head.
“I’m happy,” She tells Niklaus.
“And it what is it that makes you so?” He asks.
“You of course.” Tatia smiles, “You and your family. I’ve never had one of my own before.”
--
Elena finds Bonnie on her own, stumbles across her path with a smile.
The other girl is floating leaves in the wind, surrounding herself in their colors, and Elena feels as though she has stepped into a new land for the first time in ages. As though she has found someone new for the first time in so very long.
“You are beautiful.” Elena tells her, breaking the girl’s concentration.
The girl says nothing back, like maybe she has not heard the words before. The leaves fall back to the ground.
Elena takes her hand and she leads her away.
“I will show you to the whole universe.” She whisper, giggles, into the other girl’s hair.
The other girl giggles back.
--
Amara takes Silas and Qetsiyah wherever they wish.
She follows their lead and smiles as they explore the world. She explores it with them of course, feeling the stones underneath her hands, the earth and the leaves and the flowers. She follows them, looking up to the sky, and when she holds out her hands they each take one.
Amara takes them both away and for a while they are happy.
For a while they are alive.
Truly and wonderfully alive.
--
Katherine meets the Salvatore brothers accidentally.
She is searching again, always searching (never finding), for somewhere else to go, somewhere else to be, somewhere to live.
Katherine cannot return to where she was born. It was dead. Everything about it gone. The girl who first came from it just one of its many casualties. She had imploded and another girl had come to take her place until she had disappeared too.
But Katerina, Katherine, she is still here. She will always still be here.
She finds them when one of their carts breaks down. Katherine sees him and there is something about him, and she cannot look away.
She follows him home, to his brother, to his family.
Katherine makes a choice.
Katherine chooses them.
--
Tatia takes the family other places when the village grows too small.
She takes Rebekah’s hands and the others follow.
She takes them to worlds unseen before. Worlds yet to come.
They adapt well. She barely has to help.
She doesn’t understand at first. Tatia with her long dark hair and big brown eyes and shy smile.
But eventually she learns.
Underneath all those cries of fear and desperation, there was something else.
(A thirst for power. A hunger for it.)
--
Elena finds her Caroline alone in the dark. The young girl (to Elena they are all young, will forever be young compared to her), is crying, sobbing into a rock as though it is her only friend.
Elena lifts the girl’s face to meet her own eyes. “What’s wrong?”
The girl has stopped crying, the tears pooling in her eyes and it is only stubbornness keeping them at bay. Such stubbornness in her; Elena thinks she likes it.
“Who are you?” She asks.
“Does it matter?” Elena asks, smoothing the girl’s perfectly done curls. “Does it really matter when I’m the only one here?”
Caroline stares at her for a long time, before looking away.
“No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“So, please, tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can make it better.”
The young girl, Caroline (who is twenty two and broken already Elena will learn), laughs. Laughs and laughs until she is crying again.
--
“Why do you cover your face?” Silas asks her.
They are alone. Qetsiyah off searching for flowers to tie in her hair.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Amara asks. She was born this way after all, made this way.
“Because it is a beautiful face,” Silas says and moves slowly, gently, removing the veil from her face. “When I first saw it, I thought it was the face of an angel. I thought the heavens had sent me an angel.”
“The heavens…”
“Don’t you understand, Amara? You are my angel.”
His lips touch hers and she thinks about the love she had wanted to experience, to see.
She does not feel it.
--
Katherine giggles as the boys chase after her, her skirts whipping around her. She has the football securely in her arms and she is confident that she will win.
Katherine always win.
She spins around and sees the boys there, waiting and ready.
“Who shall I throw it too?” She asks.
“Whoever you want.” Damon says and there is something else in his tone, something underneath it that she recognizes.
Katherine smiles coyly at him.
“However will I choose?” She asks looking back and forth between them.
She throws the ball up into the air and waits to see which one will catch it.
(Waits to see them fight over it.)
Katerina is made of blood and hunger and vengeance and want.
Katerina will always want everything.
--
Caroline bursts through the water and when she looks around she sees Elena close by.
“It’s like a fairytale,” She says.
“Which part?” Elena asks.
“All of it.” Caroline says, looking around at the forest, at the falls loud in her ears, at the birds singing close by. “We don’t have this where I come from. We don’t have…”
“You shouldn’t focus on what you don’t have.” Elena says, swimming closer. “Only on what you do. And you, Caroline Forbes, have so many wonderful things. Some inside of you.”
Elena places her hand on Caroline’s chest, over her heart, and the younger girl grins.
“I have you, too.” Caroline says, “And I’ve never had a you before.”
--
Rebekah falls in love with a boy older than her and nine hundred years younger than her when they are in New Orleans. They dance and fight and make love.
Elijah and Niklaus takes turns falling in and out of love with her. Elijah loves Tatia in the fourteen hundreds. And Niklaus loves her in the seventeen hundreds. And everything seems to repeat itself. Over and over.
Tatia runs and Elijah chases after her.
Tatia smiles as Niklaus leads her away to something new he has discovered.
Kol finds mischief wherever he goes, a twinkle in his eye as he leads a woman away, as he soaks up knowledge, as he starts bar fights or duels.
Over and over, no matter where they seem to go it all seem to follow the same pattern.
Kol will cause trouble and Rebekah will fall in love and when Tatia runs Niklaus and Elijah both chase her.
--
“How do you do it?” Elena asks her eyes wide.
Bonnie had fire in her hands, moving it around. It had been water just moments before.
“Magic.” Bonnie smiles.
“No, I mean how do you do it?”
Bonnie looks at her confused. The flames extinguish and turn back to water, slipping through her fingers and onto the floor.
“How do I do what?”
“Make it into something else. Make the fire…you bend it to your will.”
“It doesn’t bend to my will, just my wishes.”
“Then what do you do to wish it?”
“I was born this way. Its…It can’t be taught.”
Elena longs for it to be different, longs to turn into what Bonnie is, to be like her. Elena longs to put the fire within her out, if only for a little while.
Longs to be someone, something, else. Which makes her laugh. It really does.
(She is someone else already, you see, and she will one day become someone else after. There will always be an after. There will always be another. Elena is the now, but there will always be before, there will always be after.)
--
Qetsiyah returns when Silas lips are still on Amara’s own.
(She is in too much shock to push him away. She has never been kissed before. She has never been here before.)
The flowers that she had collected drop to the ground and Amara swings away, leaving Silas leaning into air. The flower petals scatter, different colors, different sizes. Enough for both Qetsiyah and Amara.
She had brought them back as a gift.
“How could you?” She asks.
Amara does not have an answer. Only knows that there is no longer love in Qetsiyah’s eyes. There is only hatred. There is only hardness.
The wind blows and petals fly away in what should be something beautiful.
Amara alone feels something break, something tear in the universe around her.
--
Rebekah is in love with a boy named Alexander, a boy she wishes to marry.
“He is wonderful and kind and strong. So very strong. He will protect me from anything.” Rebekah says as she braids Tatia’s hair.
Niklaus and Elijah, ever at his brother’s side despite of everything, are trying to slip their way into something called the brotherhood. Into becoming a part of it. Into gaining more power.
Kol drinks his wine and he smiles at her, like he knows, like he knows everything.
(This was never what Tatia had wanted for them.)
--
“I will love you forever.” Stefan says, as Katherine hovers above him.
He is honest, so painfully honest, she can see it in his eyes. He truly believes the words he says.
“I will chase you forever.” Damon says, as she always him to catch her in the woods. His eyes lock onto hers, blue and brown dancing in the firelight.
He is so very honest too. She can hear it in the way he says his words. There is no trickery, no games, just truth.
Damon will chase her forever, all she has to do is ask him too.
Stefan will love her forever, all she has to do is love him back.
“Forever is a long time.” Katherine tells them.
(She thinks there will never be a person who knows this more than her.)
--
Tatia dances around the fire. With bare feet and her dress raised and mask to hide who she is.
(They all know anyways.)
She dances and dances, circling and circling, around and around.
And then she feels it.
Tatia is dancing when she feels it.
The end of those of her kind. The end of the place she calls home. The end of everything that came before her. The end of the place she became. (Not her, Amara, but they are all the same in the end, they will only exist one before the other, but they will always be the same.)
She feels it and she doubles over in pain, Henrik at her side asking what is wrong.
“They’re gone.” Is all she tells the small boy, “They are all gone.”
And she was left alone.
She will always be left alone.
--
“I need to go back.” Bonnie tells her.
There is something in her eyes as she says the words, a knowledge that Elena does not understand, even after all these years.
She is not saying these words to hurt Elena or because she doesn’t want to be on this new adventure anymore. No, Bonnie is saying them because she has responsibilities and people to take care of and she can hear them calling to her, just as Elena sometimes could hear others cries.
“I never want to go back.” Caroline says twirling around as the leaves fall down around her.
She has never seen fall before (or spring or summer). It does not exist where she comes from. Only coldness, only winter. Caroline is beautiful as she dances, free and full of life and Elena is envious. It has been so very long since she has been so young.
(She wants it back. She wants it all back.)
“I have to go back.” Bonnie says a sad look on her face, her hands holding Elena’s, as though she is holding the brunette together.
“Nothing lasts forever.” Elena says with a sad smile.
“I never want to go back.” Caroline says as she smiles at Elena as if she is her whole world.
“Nothing lasts forever.” Elena reminds her.
“You do.” The other girl smiles, plucking a red leaf from the ground and handing it to Elena like it was the greatest of gifts.
And maybe it was.
--
Amara breaks Qetsiyah and Silas.
Or maybe it is them who breaks her.
She never really knows.
All she knows is that everything is different after that.
Love, life, the way her heart pounds in her chest, trust; Amara will never be the same.
Amara will spend the rest of her life alone.
Alone until she is gone and someone else (Tatia) has taken her place.
--
Katherine brings the boys with her.
They travel to the twenties and Damon drinks too much as she and Stefan dance.
Stefan’s eyes grow darker as she goes into the back room with Damon, their fingers touching, curled together.
Katherine brings the Salvatores to the forties and they dance there too. Crooning in the background and slit in her skirt that they both follow when it shows off her olive skin.
Katherine brings them to two-thousands and she shows them what the world will become. They get lost in it, in the new creations, in the technology, in the world around them.
(They are already lost in her.)
She finds them a hotel room and she kisses them both. A kiss on the cheek for them each.
Katherine brings the Salvatore brothers with her (once the best of friends) and she leaves them their alone.
“I never loved you.” She tells one of them.
“I’ll come back for you.” She tells one of them.
Honestly, Katherine doesn’t remember what she told which.
--
Tatia forces the family back to where they came from, the boy’s hair now too short and Rebekah no longer so innocent. Kol’s eyes wild with mischief, Niklaus and Elijah still lusting for power, Rebekah no longer interested in braiding others hair or idle gossip or blades.
They are angry, they hate her, they want to go back. They want to be with her. They want to see everything. They want.
She leaves them there anyways.
“This is where you’ve always belonged.” Tatia says.
(Two days after she has disappeared, their youngest brother will die, and they will blame her for that too.)
--
Elena will meet (meet again) Damon with a giggling Caroline on her arms.
“Katherine.” He will breathe and his hand will reach out.
She does not let it touch her face.
“My name’s Elena.” She says.
“But you-”
“You said you’d come back.” Stefan appears behind him; older, wiser, knowing it’s better to stay back.
“I lied.” Elena says.
(Caroline has stopped giggling.)
--
Amara leaves.
She follows the voice that beckons her so, that entices her, promises her the universe, promises her freedom.
It is everything that Amara has ever dreamed of.
She follows the beckoning voice and she is gone, she leaves the fleeting world she was just beginning to know behind her. She travels so many places, sees so many things, meets so many new people.
Amara leaves and she does not look back.
Not for a very long time. Not until it is too late. Not until there is nothing left there.
--
“What are you?” Henrik asks, tilting his head as he watches her.
“What do you mean?” Elena asks.
“You’re special, different. That must have a name.” He says and it’s with such childhood innocence.
It’s familiar, it reminds her of before.
“I’m a Petrova,” Elena tells him and he nods. As if it’s just that easy, as though he understands.
Everything has a name after all.
She is a Petrova, Amara who came before her was the first, and Tatia and Katerina after, and now her.
Petrovas. They are full of fire. That is what she does not tell him. That is what she won’t tell him.
Petrovas are fires and they will burn your world down just by being a part of it.
That is of course why there is always something burning within her.
She has the Petrova fire of all those who came before her.
fandom: tvd/dw fusion (light on dw canon)
characters: amara, tatia, katherine, elena (and lots of canon “companions”)
disclaimer: I own nothing, including pieces that were from canon/allude to canon.
summary: “You’re special, different. That must have a name.” He says and it’s with such childhood innocence. It’s familiar, it reminds her of before. “I’m a Petrova,” Elena tells him and he nods. As if it’s just that easy, as though he understands. Everything has a name after all.
a/n: written for the au prompt doppelgangers are timelords that got stuck in my head. and I blame fluffyfrolicker and her ficathon for this. so should all of you.
Amara is the first.
(She will also be the last but she will never learn that. Her face will, her body will, her memories will, but Amara will be gone.)
She is made of clay and mud. The pieces crack around her, fall to the ground, until she is left standing. Flesh and bone. Thought and creation.
Amara is beautiful, shiny, and new. (They tell her this, as they surround her. Grown up and new, young and foolish, and beautifully naive.)
It has been such a long time since someone new had arrived.
They surround her and they talk, but she hears something above their voices, hears something, someone, whispering to her. “I’ve been waiting for you, my beautiful darling.”
That is the voice she listens to.
That is the voice she will always remember.
That is the voice she belongs to.
--
Tatia is made of the dust that Amara leaves behind.
Dust and wind, forming a girl. She wears the same face, has the memories of her life before, but she is different.
She is stronger in different places.
She is weaker in others.
Tatia is new. She is beautiful. She is shiny and new.
But that will tarnish. (It always does.)
She hears the cries from far away. A family full of them, full of anguish and pain, full of want and fear. She hears a family.
(She has never had one before.)
Tatia will fly to the ground and follow the voices. She will find them.
--
Amara leaves.
She follows the voice that beckons her so, that entices her. It promises her the universe, the world (any world she would like), freedom; the life she has always dreamed of. (Dreamed of even when she did not yet exist. Funny how the universe works like that.)
She follows the beckoning voice and she is gone, she leaves the fleeting world she was just beginning to know behind her.
Amara leaves and she does not look back. Not for a very long time.
--
Katerina is made of blood.
It swirls and swirls until it makes the form of a girl with a face the world (the universe) has seen before (and before).
She is made of blood and vengeance and she is perhaps the most human of all those who have come before her.
Blood and vengeance.
Such human things.
Hunger and want, she has those too.
In fact Katerina cannot think of a thing that she does not want. Not one single thing.
--
Amara crashes from the heavens to the Earth.
She is not used to this yet. She is still new. Perhaps she will never truly learn.
It is a man who finds her. Wide green eyes and wonder in his face. “Are you okay?” He asks.
“I…I am fine.” Amara says and she wonders if this is the first time someone has heard her speak. She knows the words, they are all there in her head, swirling around and around. Words, numbers, dates and times; they are there. She was born with them in her mind.
The man takes her back to his village, to his betrothed, telling her of what happened. Of the girl who had fallen from the sky.
Amara thinks that maybe these can be friends (she has never, truly, had friends before).
Amara thinks maybe these two can be the ones to come with her.
She is lonely as she travels. Has no one to talk back to her. (The voice that had once beckoned her has disappeared. Amara can’t hear it anymore.)
She looks back and forth between them, love shining in Qetsiyah’s eyes, and she thinks that perhaps this had been what she was looking for when she stole herself away.
Love.
--
Katherine travels and leaves lives ruined in her wake.
(She is made of blood and want and that is what it does. It ruins others. It ruins her.)
Ruin lies in her wake as she tries to find her place. Bodies and cities left to burn as she tries and she tries.
“Katerina, please, don’t do this.” Rosemary says, Trevor behind her too besotted, too brokenhearted.
Katherine does not look back.
“We must leave, they know.” Pearl tells her.
Katherine does not leave. Pearl will die in a fire and Katherine will not be there to see it. Pearl’s daughter will though.
“Monster.” Anna will spit the words out at her, hundreds of years later.
“Yes,” Elena will smile, “I suppose I am.”
--
Elena is made of fire, forged from it.
She comes out strong as steel, shaped like all those who have come before her. Beautiful, shiny, and new. (Though not new enough.)
She is made of fire, it burns within her, burns with anger, with hunger, with love, with want.
It burns and burns and burns.
She does not know what to do to put it out.
Elena plunges herself into the coldest of waters and it does not do a thing.
--
Tatia finds the family easily.
She does not hear their voices, but she can hear them calling out to her, even if they do not realize what they are doing. She finds them and she sets out to make them happy again.
(An impossible mission for an impossible girl.)
They stay in their little village for a time.
Rebekah will teach her how to braid her hair and how to carve her name into the cavern walls. Tatia will dance by the fire barefoot with Niklaus, with Elijah. She will play hide and seek with Kol and Henrik.
Tatia will laugh and smile and hold out her hands to each of them invitingly. They will all stare at her. Like she is something new.
(Instead of the truth. That she is something old. She is something new and old and nothing like them at all.)
“I’m happy.” She tells Elijah as she sips at her wine.
“Is that new to you?” He asks.
“Yes, new to me.” Tatia says, though she has memories of happiness in her head.
“I’m happy,” She tells Niklaus.
“And it what is it that makes you so?” He asks.
“You of course.” Tatia smiles, “You and your family. I’ve never had one of my own before.”
--
Elena finds Bonnie on her own, stumbles across her path with a smile.
The other girl is floating leaves in the wind, surrounding herself in their colors, and Elena feels as though she has stepped into a new land for the first time in ages. As though she has found someone new for the first time in so very long.
“You are beautiful.” Elena tells her, breaking the girl’s concentration.
The girl says nothing back, like maybe she has not heard the words before. The leaves fall back to the ground.
Elena takes her hand and she leads her away.
“I will show you to the whole universe.” She whisper, giggles, into the other girl’s hair.
The other girl giggles back.
--
Amara takes Silas and Qetsiyah wherever they wish.
She follows their lead and smiles as they explore the world. She explores it with them of course, feeling the stones underneath her hands, the earth and the leaves and the flowers. She follows them, looking up to the sky, and when she holds out her hands they each take one.
Amara takes them both away and for a while they are happy.
For a while they are alive.
Truly and wonderfully alive.
--
Katherine meets the Salvatore brothers accidentally.
She is searching again, always searching (never finding), for somewhere else to go, somewhere else to be, somewhere to live.
Katherine cannot return to where she was born. It was dead. Everything about it gone. The girl who first came from it just one of its many casualties. She had imploded and another girl had come to take her place until she had disappeared too.
But Katerina, Katherine, she is still here. She will always still be here.
She finds them when one of their carts breaks down. Katherine sees him and there is something about him, and she cannot look away.
She follows him home, to his brother, to his family.
Katherine makes a choice.
Katherine chooses them.
--
Tatia takes the family other places when the village grows too small.
She takes Rebekah’s hands and the others follow.
She takes them to worlds unseen before. Worlds yet to come.
They adapt well. She barely has to help.
She doesn’t understand at first. Tatia with her long dark hair and big brown eyes and shy smile.
But eventually she learns.
Underneath all those cries of fear and desperation, there was something else.
(A thirst for power. A hunger for it.)
--
Elena finds her Caroline alone in the dark. The young girl (to Elena they are all young, will forever be young compared to her), is crying, sobbing into a rock as though it is her only friend.
Elena lifts the girl’s face to meet her own eyes. “What’s wrong?”
The girl has stopped crying, the tears pooling in her eyes and it is only stubbornness keeping them at bay. Such stubbornness in her; Elena thinks she likes it.
“Who are you?” She asks.
“Does it matter?” Elena asks, smoothing the girl’s perfectly done curls. “Does it really matter when I’m the only one here?”
Caroline stares at her for a long time, before looking away.
“No, I guess it doesn’t.”
“So, please, tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can make it better.”
The young girl, Caroline (who is twenty two and broken already Elena will learn), laughs. Laughs and laughs until she is crying again.
--
“Why do you cover your face?” Silas asks her.
They are alone. Qetsiyah off searching for flowers to tie in her hair.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Amara asks. She was born this way after all, made this way.
“Because it is a beautiful face,” Silas says and moves slowly, gently, removing the veil from her face. “When I first saw it, I thought it was the face of an angel. I thought the heavens had sent me an angel.”
“The heavens…”
“Don’t you understand, Amara? You are my angel.”
His lips touch hers and she thinks about the love she had wanted to experience, to see.
She does not feel it.
--
Katherine giggles as the boys chase after her, her skirts whipping around her. She has the football securely in her arms and she is confident that she will win.
Katherine always win.
She spins around and sees the boys there, waiting and ready.
“Who shall I throw it too?” She asks.
“Whoever you want.” Damon says and there is something else in his tone, something underneath it that she recognizes.
Katherine smiles coyly at him.
“However will I choose?” She asks looking back and forth between them.
She throws the ball up into the air and waits to see which one will catch it.
(Waits to see them fight over it.)
Katerina is made of blood and hunger and vengeance and want.
Katerina will always want everything.
--
Caroline bursts through the water and when she looks around she sees Elena close by.
“It’s like a fairytale,” She says.
“Which part?” Elena asks.
“All of it.” Caroline says, looking around at the forest, at the falls loud in her ears, at the birds singing close by. “We don’t have this where I come from. We don’t have…”
“You shouldn’t focus on what you don’t have.” Elena says, swimming closer. “Only on what you do. And you, Caroline Forbes, have so many wonderful things. Some inside of you.”
Elena places her hand on Caroline’s chest, over her heart, and the younger girl grins.
“I have you, too.” Caroline says, “And I’ve never had a you before.”
--
Rebekah falls in love with a boy older than her and nine hundred years younger than her when they are in New Orleans. They dance and fight and make love.
Elijah and Niklaus takes turns falling in and out of love with her. Elijah loves Tatia in the fourteen hundreds. And Niklaus loves her in the seventeen hundreds. And everything seems to repeat itself. Over and over.
Tatia runs and Elijah chases after her.
Tatia smiles as Niklaus leads her away to something new he has discovered.
Kol finds mischief wherever he goes, a twinkle in his eye as he leads a woman away, as he soaks up knowledge, as he starts bar fights or duels.
Over and over, no matter where they seem to go it all seem to follow the same pattern.
Kol will cause trouble and Rebekah will fall in love and when Tatia runs Niklaus and Elijah both chase her.
--
“How do you do it?” Elena asks her eyes wide.
Bonnie had fire in her hands, moving it around. It had been water just moments before.
“Magic.” Bonnie smiles.
“No, I mean how do you do it?”
Bonnie looks at her confused. The flames extinguish and turn back to water, slipping through her fingers and onto the floor.
“How do I do what?”
“Make it into something else. Make the fire…you bend it to your will.”
“It doesn’t bend to my will, just my wishes.”
“Then what do you do to wish it?”
“I was born this way. Its…It can’t be taught.”
Elena longs for it to be different, longs to turn into what Bonnie is, to be like her. Elena longs to put the fire within her out, if only for a little while.
Longs to be someone, something, else. Which makes her laugh. It really does.
(She is someone else already, you see, and she will one day become someone else after. There will always be an after. There will always be another. Elena is the now, but there will always be before, there will always be after.)
--
Qetsiyah returns when Silas lips are still on Amara’s own.
(She is in too much shock to push him away. She has never been kissed before. She has never been here before.)
The flowers that she had collected drop to the ground and Amara swings away, leaving Silas leaning into air. The flower petals scatter, different colors, different sizes. Enough for both Qetsiyah and Amara.
She had brought them back as a gift.
“How could you?” She asks.
Amara does not have an answer. Only knows that there is no longer love in Qetsiyah’s eyes. There is only hatred. There is only hardness.
The wind blows and petals fly away in what should be something beautiful.
Amara alone feels something break, something tear in the universe around her.
--
Rebekah is in love with a boy named Alexander, a boy she wishes to marry.
“He is wonderful and kind and strong. So very strong. He will protect me from anything.” Rebekah says as she braids Tatia’s hair.
Niklaus and Elijah, ever at his brother’s side despite of everything, are trying to slip their way into something called the brotherhood. Into becoming a part of it. Into gaining more power.
Kol drinks his wine and he smiles at her, like he knows, like he knows everything.
(This was never what Tatia had wanted for them.)
--
“I will love you forever.” Stefan says, as Katherine hovers above him.
He is honest, so painfully honest, she can see it in his eyes. He truly believes the words he says.
“I will chase you forever.” Damon says, as she always him to catch her in the woods. His eyes lock onto hers, blue and brown dancing in the firelight.
He is so very honest too. She can hear it in the way he says his words. There is no trickery, no games, just truth.
Damon will chase her forever, all she has to do is ask him too.
Stefan will love her forever, all she has to do is love him back.
“Forever is a long time.” Katherine tells them.
(She thinks there will never be a person who knows this more than her.)
--
Tatia dances around the fire. With bare feet and her dress raised and mask to hide who she is.
(They all know anyways.)
She dances and dances, circling and circling, around and around.
And then she feels it.
Tatia is dancing when she feels it.
The end of those of her kind. The end of the place she calls home. The end of everything that came before her. The end of the place she became. (Not her, Amara, but they are all the same in the end, they will only exist one before the other, but they will always be the same.)
She feels it and she doubles over in pain, Henrik at her side asking what is wrong.
“They’re gone.” Is all she tells the small boy, “They are all gone.”
And she was left alone.
She will always be left alone.
--
“I need to go back.” Bonnie tells her.
There is something in her eyes as she says the words, a knowledge that Elena does not understand, even after all these years.
She is not saying these words to hurt Elena or because she doesn’t want to be on this new adventure anymore. No, Bonnie is saying them because she has responsibilities and people to take care of and she can hear them calling to her, just as Elena sometimes could hear others cries.
“I never want to go back.” Caroline says twirling around as the leaves fall down around her.
She has never seen fall before (or spring or summer). It does not exist where she comes from. Only coldness, only winter. Caroline is beautiful as she dances, free and full of life and Elena is envious. It has been so very long since she has been so young.
(She wants it back. She wants it all back.)
“I have to go back.” Bonnie says a sad look on her face, her hands holding Elena’s, as though she is holding the brunette together.
“Nothing lasts forever.” Elena says with a sad smile.
“I never want to go back.” Caroline says as she smiles at Elena as if she is her whole world.
“Nothing lasts forever.” Elena reminds her.
“You do.” The other girl smiles, plucking a red leaf from the ground and handing it to Elena like it was the greatest of gifts.
And maybe it was.
--
Amara breaks Qetsiyah and Silas.
Or maybe it is them who breaks her.
She never really knows.
All she knows is that everything is different after that.
Love, life, the way her heart pounds in her chest, trust; Amara will never be the same.
Amara will spend the rest of her life alone.
Alone until she is gone and someone else (Tatia) has taken her place.
--
Katherine brings the boys with her.
They travel to the twenties and Damon drinks too much as she and Stefan dance.
Stefan’s eyes grow darker as she goes into the back room with Damon, their fingers touching, curled together.
Katherine brings the Salvatores to the forties and they dance there too. Crooning in the background and slit in her skirt that they both follow when it shows off her olive skin.
Katherine brings them to two-thousands and she shows them what the world will become. They get lost in it, in the new creations, in the technology, in the world around them.
(They are already lost in her.)
She finds them a hotel room and she kisses them both. A kiss on the cheek for them each.
Katherine brings the Salvatore brothers with her (once the best of friends) and she leaves them their alone.
“I never loved you.” She tells one of them.
“I’ll come back for you.” She tells one of them.
Honestly, Katherine doesn’t remember what she told which.
--
Tatia forces the family back to where they came from, the boy’s hair now too short and Rebekah no longer so innocent. Kol’s eyes wild with mischief, Niklaus and Elijah still lusting for power, Rebekah no longer interested in braiding others hair or idle gossip or blades.
They are angry, they hate her, they want to go back. They want to be with her. They want to see everything. They want.
She leaves them there anyways.
“This is where you’ve always belonged.” Tatia says.
(Two days after she has disappeared, their youngest brother will die, and they will blame her for that too.)
--
Elena will meet (meet again) Damon with a giggling Caroline on her arms.
“Katherine.” He will breathe and his hand will reach out.
She does not let it touch her face.
“My name’s Elena.” She says.
“But you-”
“You said you’d come back.” Stefan appears behind him; older, wiser, knowing it’s better to stay back.
“I lied.” Elena says.
(Caroline has stopped giggling.)
--
Amara leaves.
She follows the voice that beckons her so, that entices her, promises her the universe, promises her freedom.
It is everything that Amara has ever dreamed of.
She follows the beckoning voice and she is gone, she leaves the fleeting world she was just beginning to know behind her. She travels so many places, sees so many things, meets so many new people.
Amara leaves and she does not look back.
Not for a very long time. Not until it is too late. Not until there is nothing left there.
--
“What are you?” Henrik asks, tilting his head as he watches her.
“What do you mean?” Elena asks.
“You’re special, different. That must have a name.” He says and it’s with such childhood innocence.
It’s familiar, it reminds her of before.
“I’m a Petrova,” Elena tells him and he nods. As if it’s just that easy, as though he understands.
Everything has a name after all.
She is a Petrova, Amara who came before her was the first, and Tatia and Katerina after, and now her.
Petrovas. They are full of fire. That is what she does not tell him. That is what she won’t tell him.
Petrovas are fires and they will burn your world down just by being a part of it.
That is of course why there is always something burning within her.
She has the Petrova fire of all those who came before her.