1864 Flashback

"Kat!" I laughed, the wind whipping my hair, which had only minutes ago been styled so beautifully.

"Lyn! What are you doing out there?" Katherine yelled, walking out of the house. "It's about to rain. Come back inside!"

"Just come outside," I begged, turning around, my cheeks rosy from the cold. "Don't you love this weather?"

She sighed and gave me a small smile. "Not particularly. I'll come out though, but just because I love you," she informed me, and I grinned.

"Let's pretend like we're fair maidens who have run away from our terrible brothers!" I exclaimed, eager to play with her.

"Okay," she giggled.

We ran through the garden, laughing and shrieking when the wind lifted our skirts.

"It's getting cold Kaitlyn, let's go back inside," Katherine begged, and I gave in.

We stepped back inside the warm house and held hands as we walked upstairs to our rooms.

"You know this will have to end soon," Katherine said as she stopped me before we split ways. "I will have to leave in a few weeks."

I looked down at the floor sadly, letting go of her hand. "Why can't you stay longer Kat? I'm 16 and your 17, we still have months before we need to get wed."

"Oh I'm not looking to get married," she chuckled, and I looked up at her in confusion.

"There's a bad man looking for me," she whispered in my ear and I gasped.

"But I can protect you," I demanded, and she smiled softly, tucking hair behind my ears.

"I'm sure you can," she mumbled lovingly. "But I don't want you getting hurt."

Suddenly we heard laughter downstairs, and we bent over the banister to see the Salvatore brothers running about, tackling each other on the floor.

I gazed longingly at the older one, Damon Salvatore, as he threw his head back in laughter, his blue eyes shining.

"Lyn! He's like 9 years older than you," Katherine chastised, lightly smacking the back of my head.

"I can't help but stare at him!" I protested giddily. "He's so beautiful."

"Ms.Paige," a maid quickly ran up to me. "You must come with me immediately. Your mother has had another episode."

The woman gripped my wrist and pulled me away from Katherine, as I dreaded going to see my mother's condition.

End of Flashback

"Why hasn't she woken up yet? Isn't she supernatural or something?" I heard an angry voice say.

"We don't know if she's supernatural," another calmer voice said.

"Stefan! If she's not a vampire, then how is she still alive?" the angry voice said again.

Sound came into focus again, and I could hear voices arguing in another room. I opened my eyes slowly, blinking the sleep away, as I saw a white ceiling above me.

But it wasn't cracked or flaming, it wasn't about to collapse on me. I wasn't in the basement anymore.

I let out a low groan of pain as my arms ached, most likely from burns.

The talking stopped, and I heard various footsteps enter the room.

"She's awake," I heard an nasal female voice say.

I sat up quickly, noticing that I was on a plush couch, in an expensive-looking living room.

"Kaitlyn, right?" the dark-haired man walked towards me, crouching in front of the couch. "Do you know who I am?"

I looked into the icy eyes of the man I had so long ago been head over heels for.

"Damon," I murmured quietly, and he nodded, his eyes lighting up happily.

"Okay, why don't you tell us how you're still alive?" he asked gently, and I looked up to see Elena and a boy I recognized next to her.

Stefan.

"Why don't you tell me how you're still alive," my voice rose in volume as I placed my feet on the ground, getting up. Panic was rushing through me. "You were mortal in 1864, and I-I saw you get shot!"

"Calm her down Damon," Stefan stated angrily as if I were some frail creature who was spinning out of control.

"Okay, please, just sit back down Lyn," he pleaded, and my heart clenched at the nickname.

"It's Kaitlyn to you," I hissed, but obliged, sinking back into the pillows. "And don't tell me to calm down! I have a perfectly reasonable excuse to be freaking out right now!"

"Okay, Kaitlyn, we got it," Elena stepped forward and pushed Damon away. "Now answer us."

"I don't want to talk to you!" I spat, my eyes hurting at the mere sight of her. "I don't even want to look at you!"

She was a painful reminder of how Katherine and I had parted.

"How do you know this girl Stefan?" she challenged her boyfriend, who pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"She's a girl from our past Elena," he explained. "She was our friend."

I scoffed at that. "We weren't friends," I reminded him unkindly. "You barely knew I existed. Both of you!"

"Of course we knew you existed! We were just, um, distracted. By Katherine." Damon protested, stepping back in front of Elena. "Okay, enough with this. Please just tell us how you're not dead."

"I don't know!" I exploded irritably. "That's kind of what I've been wondering for the past 150 some years!"

All of them looked taken aback at my reaction.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Stefan reach for a pointy object, and my heart spiked in fear. I scrambled up from the couch and looked at them with accusing eyes.

"What's he doing?" I demanded, pointing at Stefan, who was now walking up to me.

"Relax, I'm just seeing how fast you can heal," he explained, though it did nothing to ease my fear.

"Um, you can just look at my burns! Hello, not healed!" I showed him desperately, but he pushed my hands away from his face.

"They were much worse a few hours ago," he revealed, and that shocked me, so I let him press the point against my finger, just hard enough to draw blood.

We watched the small cut, for a long time, and after about 2 minutes, it started healing.

"Okay, so she heals slower than vampires, but there's the proof that she is indeed some kind of supernatural," Stefan told the others.

"How did you not realize you healed faster than others?" Elena asked suspiciously. "You must have gotten some kind of injury in the past decades."

I almost winced as the memories of experimentation and torture rushed through my head.

"Of course I've gotten hurt," I snapped. "I just didn't know how I was healing quicker than others. I still don't even know what the heck I am!"

She nodded but didn't look convinced. She gave me a look that implied she didn't like me very much.

Then Damon grabbed a clear glass that had thick dark liquid inside and brought it up to my face.

I gagged at the bitter smell and shoved it away. "Ew, what is that?" I yelped.

I didn't get an answer.

"She doesn't lust for blood, so she's not that either," Damon muttered to Stefan and Elena

"BLOOD?!" I shrieked.

Still no reply.

I noticed there was some tension between Damon and Stefan, and awkwardness between Damon and Elena. Something obviously was happening between them.

"At least tell me how you're alive," I asked Damon since he was the only one who would actually look at me.

"Lyn- I mean Kaitlyn, we're um, we're vampires," he mumbled under his breath, but I heard him.

"What?" I screeched, then quieted. "Actually, somehow that doesn't surprise me."

They looked confused at my sudden change in emotions.

"Well, I'd been following many leads of other immortal human cases over the decades, and I suspected something similar to vampires," I explained. "I just can't believe you guys are. How?"

"We died with vampire blood in our system" Stefan explained.

"How do you know Katherine," Elena spoke up, tired of being left out. "Maybe you can help us with our problem."

"What? What do you mean?" I asked her.

"Well, she's in town," Elena told me, and my eyes widened.

"What?! She's alive?!" I gasped.

"She's a vampire Kaitlyn. She was turned in the 1490s. In fact, she's the one that turned us" Damon explained, and my stomach churned.

So that means I could have found her all these years. But why didn't she come to find me? I thought we were friends. A rush of unidentifiable emotions ran through me, and I couldn't tell if they were mostly positive or negative.

"We were friends," I explained half-heartedly. "But not anymore."

"Not anymore?" Elena repeated. "Then you can help us in–"

"Elena, enough," Stefan interrupted. "We need to get going to the Lockwood's house."

"Why are you going there?" I asked curiously.

"Didn't you hear? The mayor died in the basement!" Elena told me, seemingly forgetting that I had been unconscious for the past hours.

"You. Stay here," Damon ordered, giving me a stern look.

I didn't reply, but I was going to follow his orders. I had a little bit of snooping to do.

∆ ∆ ∆

3 hours later, I fell backward in Damon's bed, exhausted from all the searching I had done. The only thing I had found which even remotely connected to the past, was a very old picture of Katherine in Stefan's room.

And all it had achieved was making me sad.

Suddenly a ringing noise scared me, and I was surprised to see that my phone had survived. I answered and immediately covered my ears at the volume.

"KAITLYN. PAIGE. WHY DON'T YOU ANSWER YOUR DARN PHONE!?" Matt screamed.

I flinched. "Sorry Matt, I was asleep."

It was kind of true. Technically, I had been unconscious for a while.

"I was so worried about you!" he said angrily. "There was a crazy fire last night, I thought you were in danger!"

"I'm fine Matt. I appreciate your worry, but I went home early remember?" I reminded him, and I could hear him calming down.

"Okay, I'm just at the Lockwood house for the Mayor's wake, but if you need something, call me."

I reassured him that I would, and ended the call.

Then I put the phone on the nightstand by Damon's bed and shut my eyes.

The stealthy brunette had just finished killing the blondie in the hospital and smirked to herself as she walked away.

She had a plan.

A fantastic plan, that might just allow her an escape from her run from the devil.

All she had left to do for the night was to check up on an old friend.

She had been watching over Kaitlyn Paige for a few weeks now, just like she did every couple of years.

She snuck into the Salvatore House and tip-toed up the stairs.

The brothers weren't back yet from the Mayor's Wake, and she had just the right amount of time to see her dear friend.

She walked into her ex-lover's room and smiled a little when she saw the sleeping girl on the bed.

"I wish I could talk to you," she mumbled under her breath, yearning to tell the girl all that she had learned.

The brunette quietly sat down on the edge, pulling the covers over the girl, and pressing a feathery kiss on her cheek.

"Sleep well Lyn," she whispered sadly before she left.

∆ ∆ ∆