Chapter Text
Season 2 Episode 15
Part 4
Rose POV
“So Damon, why the outfit change? Finally acknowledge that you’re not pretty enough for my niece?”
The vampire snorted at Jenna’s jabs, although his eyes definitely sharpened. And that definitely gave Rose another reason to be on guard.
“Maybe… but I’m sure that there’s a different girl around here who might be interested.” He winked at Rose, and it made her want to throw up.
“Your girlfriend’s right over there, buddy,” she snapped, nodding towards Andie.
“Maybe we want a th—”
“Knock it off, Damon,” Alaric snapped. At least someone has a sense of decorum around here.
Elijah was tense beside her, and she was sure that Damon was the cause.
“Changing subjects,” Jenna said, breaking the newly formed, extremely tense silence that had settled over the table. “But, I hate to break it to you, Damon, but according to Elijah, your family is so not a founder of this town.”
Damon hummed. “Do tell.”
“Well, as I mentioned to Jenna earlier, a faction of settlers migrated from Salem after the witch trials in the 1690s. Over the next hundred years they developed this community where they could feel safe from persecution.”
Damon had a skeptical look on his face, but was still paying rapt attention, like he thought Elijah knew something he didn’t, something he needed to know.
If she was being honest, Rose didn’t give two shits about what that information was, she just wanted to get the fuck out of the house relatively unscathed. Which, was seemingly impossible considering the looks Damon was giving her.
He was looking her up and down like she was something he wanted to eat. It was almost the predatory stare that the Strigoi had aimed at her back in Spokane. It was beyond unsettling, and unnatural, and wrong.
He wasn’t a Strigoi—at least not that she could tell. His eyes weren’t rimmed with red, she didn’t get nauseous when she was around him—at least not for any reason other than the fact that he was a complete and utter creep—and as far as she could tell, there was more to him than a complete and utter lack of humanity. It didn’t change the fact that she knew something was off about him.
Her breathing slowly started to tick up, her vision slowly starting to blur and Mason was right there, until—
“Rosemarie? Are you okay?”
She stood up so fast she almost knocked her chair to the ground. “I need some air,” she choked out.
Then, she fled.
She sped down the hallways until she reached the front door, and then slammed it behind her as she exited.
The porch a nice reprieve from the tension-filled dining room. The air was just chilled enough to give her a wake-up call without giving her frostbite, and the wind had become barely a whisper of a breeze by the time she had reached it.
It was barely a moment later when she heard the door creak open behind her. “Rosemarie?”
She tensed. It was an embarrassing thing for her, because it was the second time in barely a week that she had run away from a room full of people when she was on the verge of tears.
But, despite her humiliation, she turned anyway. Because, for some reason, Elijah had broken down her walls in barely a day. It was a terrifying feeling, but it was freeing.
At least it was until she saw a blur behind Elijah and the glint of something silver in what was seemingly the air.
She didn’t think, she reacted.
She wasn’t sure how, but by some miracle of dhampir abilities, she was in front of Elijah fast enough to grab whatever the silver thing was. A dagger.
Something slammed into her, grabbing her by the throat, lifting her up until she could see his face clearly. Damon.
“Get out of my way, or I swear—”
His hand was raised just enough for the dagger to be easily accessible to her. That was a big mistake. She was able to grab it before he even noticed her hand was moving. He was too focused on strangling her and stewing on his anger that he barely realized that it was missing.
But, his biggest mistake was leaving so many clear target areas open. One of which being his entire arm. She twisted the dagger around and thrust it straight into his forearm, hard enough to tear through ligaments and shatter bone.
He dropped her as he recoiled, and all she could think of was how glad she was to have dhampir speed and strength. How glad she was for Dim—
“What the literal fuck are you?” He hissed.
He looked like he was going to lunge at her. But, he seemed to think better of it after his eyes looked passed her short frame. Elijah.
She chose to ignore the testosterone-filled pissing contest and narrowed her eyes at the man in front of her. “The better question is what the fuck are you?”
Her voice was horse, her breathing still unsteady. She was surprised, considering he had barely grabbed her for more than a few seconds. She had moved fast enough to get out of his grip relatively quickly. But, on the other hand, he had been holding her pretty tightly…
“I’m none of your damn business.”
“Likewise, buddy.”
None of them noticed Elijah speeding behind until he snapped the other vampire’s neck.
“We’re leaving. Now.”
She nodded once, removing the dagger from Damon’s arm with the practiced ease of someone who’d been stabbing test-dummies through the heart with stakes for months.
It didn’t take long before they were in Elijah’s car, speeding out of the Salvatore’s driveway.
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Elijah POV
It had been exactly forty three minutes away from Mystic Falls by the time any words exchanged between the two of them. Elijah didn’t know how to break the silence, but he knew he needed to get the dagger away from Rose before she stabbed him with it. Though, From the look in her eyes, it almost looked like she wanted to stab herself more.
“May I have that dagger?” His eyes didn’t stray from the road.
“If you give me some fucking answers.”
Her voice was bitter, but her voice cracked and he could smell the salt from the silent tears streaming down her face.
“Rosemarie—”
“Don’t,” she snapped. “Just fucking don’t.”
More silence filled the car, only this time it was somehow more tense than it had been previously. The air was thick with his sorrow and her pain, and it was killing him, and from the way he could hear her almost-silent sobs, he figured it was killing her too.
He broke first.
“I know that all dhampirs and moroi are warned of strigoi from a very young age.” From the corner of his eye, he saw her head whip towards him. “But, they don’t tell you of every danger that you need to watch out for.”
“Like you and Damon?”
“Like vampires—and not your kind. My kind.”
“Which are?”
“I am one of the five original vampires to ever be created. From us, others like Damon have been created. Although, my kind are indirectly responsible for the creation of your kind too.”
“Moroi and dhampirs were an experiment by witches, who had hoped to eliminate vampires of my kind through… alternative methods. They thought that if they could create some kind of new supernatural species, that they could eliminate us. And so, they mixed vampire blood with witch blood, and fed it to a pregnant human. When the child was born, it was a Moroi.
“They kept experimenting, only for the same result to occur every time. And, when moroi started to have children with humans, dhampirs were created. The very first strigoi were moroi who accidentally killed a human when feeding.”
“What a fucking history lesson,” Rose muttered. “So this dagger… kills you?”
“No. There is nothing left on this earth that can kill an original, like me.” He said. “It will, however, put me into what is essentially a coma, until it is removed.”
“Right, okay. Magical comas, and witches and actual vampires. What’s next? Werewolves, wooden stakes and holy water?” Her head hit the carseats’s headrest with a thunk.
He cringed, because he really didn’t want to tell her the next part. At least, not if she was this upset about it.
“Not the holy water,” he said. “But the rest is…”
“Don’t fucking tell me it’s true.”
“Do you want me to lie?”
There was a deep sigh, and then. “So, let me guess: the next thing I’m gonna find out is that stupid house-invite-rumor-thing is true.”
“Once we’re invited in, we can come and go as we please, and hotels and rental properties are a little tricky, but otherwise yes.”
“Fucking—” she took a deep breath. “So where are we going now?”
“Richmond.”
“And my stuff?”
“I’ll send someone.”
“Right.”
There was a pause.
“I’m going to call my brother,” he said. “Feel free to eavesdrop.”
She laughed, before she realized what he was implying. “Wait, your whole family are the original vampires?”
“Just my siblings, but yes.”
Her hands ran over her face, trying to erase the tear stains.
“So why am I allowed to eavesdrop?”
“I guess I should probably tell you about soulmates.”
“WHAT?”
Elijah cringed again, and not just from the increase in decibels. He wasn’t planning on having this conversation until quite some time down the line. Too bad that fate had other plans.
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Klaus POV
As if he wasn’t already in a bad enough mood, Klaus’s phone rang right as he was trying to fall asleep. And, of course it just so happened to be his annoying brother. The only one awake, and the one he hadn’t heard from in quite a few decades. He, quite frankly, had wanted it to stay that way.
“What do you want Elijah?”
“I want a lot of things. But, I figured that I should tell you that I found our soulmate—and also the doppelgänger.”
That caused him to sit up ramrod straight. “And where are they exactly?”
“I’ve sent someone to collect the doppelgänger, and as for Rosemarie—”
“That little traitor—”
“No. Our soulmate Rosemarie. Not the same person.”
“So her name is also Rosemarie, then?”
“That is what I just said, although I’ve been told that she typically prefers to simply go by ‘Rose.’”
Klaus hummed in response, barely able to stop himself from begging Elijah to send a picture of her like some pathetic dog.
He didn’t have a chance to respond before Elijah spoke again. “Meet me in Richmond, and we can discuss next steps.
The line went dead, and the sound of Elijah’s voice left along with it.
And, as for Klaus: he was left speechless for the first time in what seemed like centuries.