Chapter Text
"The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage." – Jack London
chapter one: mayday, mayday
She has a vision of Grayson Gilbert.
His wife is beside him, loose white shirt near-ethereal as it reflects the dim flicker of drowned headlights. Her head lolled, long, dark hair obscuring the twist of her neck.
Dead, on impact.
Water is pouring in, bracingly cold, as his eyes leave his wife for the girl in the backseat, similarly slumped, similarly long, dark hair, shrouding her face. Her fate.
Only the teenage girl comes to, bruised and unknowing of what just happened, as Grayson fights the door, sealed by the force pressing inward, then the window, elbow brutally swinging against the glass like an animal stuck in a cage.
Elena extends her hand as far as she can reach, begs him to stop, voice choking off as the torrent of water has them submerged. She wants only the reassurance of not being alone – of dying alone – as her last breath leaves her lungs.
In the gloom, there’s no one to hear, to see, to aid. The car is their tomb, not built to open from the inside.
He stops, to offer her a modicum of stillness, an illusion of peace, just for the moment before her eyes close.
Had he done the same, had he given in, he would have been saved. The man who swims to his door would have pulled him out, not seeing through the shadows of the backseat, for the girl whose heart is lulling to eternal sleep.
Grayson tells the vampire he recognizes as Stefan Salvatore, no – not him – save my daughter, and dies, with his eyes wide open.
Someone gets the drop on her in Richmond.
She wakes in a field, far outside that city, bound wrists stretched over her head, rope tight and bruising, the muscles in her shoulders aching. Her hair is a tangled riot, skin abraded, dress torn.
Someone without the muscle or the courtesy to carry her. Vindictive enough to drag her.
She stays slumped in the dirt, blinking the fog of the dispersed spell from her mind, cataloguing and brushing aside the minor injuries.
What an auspicious start, to her retirement.
Her audience of one stares down at her, tucking their phone away, putting their hand on the knife sheathed to their belt.
"Surprised?"
Casey ignores the gloating dig in that question, listening for and looking for others. Trying to figure out where she is. The how matters less than where, and why.
"Should I tell you where we are, or do you know that at least?"
No...somehow, in this clearing, in this destroyed wood, lies memory.
Had she still had her abilities, her affliction, she might have woken screaming, trapped reliving the one hundred hangings and burnings that took place here. It's jolting, realizing she feels nothing at all but humid air on her skin, as if a sense – or five – have been cut off. She's been blinded, deafened, loss the sense of touch, reduced to seeing as everyone else, hearing as everyone else, feeling as everyone else. The only benefit now, is she can stop from reacting. She can think.
Marie continues, aggravated she hasn't gained a response.
"I didn't think it would be this easy. I was prepared to fight you," she laughs with the absurdity of easy success, with nerves still. "I was so nervous you saw something in me, that maybe you'd know."
Casey pulls her bound arms down, cradles them against her chest, tries to keep her raw wrists away from the knots. "Well," she modulates her voice to be lackluster, purposefully giving no real reaction. "I'm your captive audience. Why don't you enlighten me on what we're doing here, since I don't know anything at all?"
Marie works her jaw, glaring at her surroundings before transferring the force of it down at Casey, moving closer, standing taller with each step. "Nothing? You can't guess?"
Casey blinks, for all the world, unperturbed.
"Why would I take you here? Tonight?" She stresses.
She briefly glances at Marie's knife, in question.
Why would a witch of middling talent would take someone of magical blood, if not at her previous...denomination...to an isolated spot of powerful, consecrated grounds, on a new moon, with a ritual knife openly strapped to her belt? Welllll.
"Does it all just bleed together? Do the deaths mean nothing to you?" She tilts her head, seemingly genuinely curious.
"Whose?" She asks.
Marie laughs, in disbelief and disappointment, like Casey has failed to live up to her expectations. She rolls her eyes, and her hand falls from her knife. "The doppelgänger's family."
Casey frowns at her chaffed wrists, fingers idly stretching.
The doppelgängers parents.
The crash off Wickery Bridge?
It's unfathomable that...it hasn't happened yet. Hasn't happened a long time ago. She's still adjusting, relearning the linear flow of time. She's not trapped in the past one minute, then the future, while being splintered into a dozen other presents.
Thinking about it happening now is like taking her to Sarajevo and saying the Archduke is about to be shot.
"Please go on," she mutters.
"Once it's confirmed that they're dead, you can join them.”
Her brows twitch.
"Because one has something to do with the other?"
"Can't have you intervening."
Casey tilts her head back into the dirt and stares up at the dark sky.
Maria didn't know anything about seer magic. Anyone who could be jealous couldn't truly understand it. Seers can't lie. Not outright. And again, she was bound by oath that she would not change through action or inaction, through deed, or word what she has foretold. That was the Faustian bargain she made to acquire the resources to piece her sanity and lucidity together. The deal to get the visions to stop. The backlash of breaking that vow would...
"I couldn't even if I wanted to.”
“Guess it’s a good thing you didn’t want to then."
She grits her teeth. “Condemnation from someone intent on murdering me? Having me bound in the dirt doesn't give you the moral high ground. It only shows you're afraid of someone who doesn't even have magic left to fight you. You would not have even tried if-"
"Don't delude yourself," Maria spits, concentrating hard before piercing her with a nerve spell that races like electricity in her veins, jerking her into a rigid seizure. “You had power, now you're nothing.”
“And yet here you have me,” she chokes out, laughing with it.
Marie strides even closer, as if the magic wasn't enough. She wants the superiority of standing directly over her, forcing Casey to look up on the flat of her back.
“Don’t you realize what you’ve done?" She mocks. "You didn’t remove the target, you just stopped yourself from seeing it. Someone else would have gotten to you, and once they realized they couldn’t spell the knowledge out of your head or compel you they’d break you.”
"Oh?" She looks up at her, eyes large, staying coiled and still in the dirt "you're doing this for me then? Giving me the easy way out?"
Maria juts her chin, defensive and self-righteous.
"Just a coincidence of location? Not planning on profiting at all?"
"You used to be a witch, your blood means you deserve a chance to make it to the Other Side, to be with the ancestors."
She blinks, buries her incredulity, and that part of her that wants to argue and reason and talk her way out this, because betrayal masquerading as mercy, a mercenary affecting kindness, is lunacy.
She thinks, going to the Other Side? Like hell.
“Want to know what I saw in you Marie?” Better souls than Marie have faltered at the chance, to hear her words, her judgment. Hear a seer's determination. Marie is just the same, freezing at the opportunity.
“Nothing. At. All,” and she takes her moment quickly, and violently, kick out.
The crash reverberates against the open water.
Splinters of white oak is strewn over the bridge, the wooden guardrail split like the wreckage of a ship.
The hairs on the back of her neck are raised, skin prickled though she isn't cold. Her heart beats like a drum as the water sloshes from the impact. She’s not a creature of magic any longer, but she imagines she can feel the resonance that rings out, calls aid to the doppelgänger. She toes off her shoes between one board and the next, keeps her hand outstretched onto the rail until she comes to the gaping wound. The red backlights descend into the murky water, near obscured under a dark, clouded sky. She's shaking from more than adrenaline, the poison spiking through her bloodstream.
Marie knew that she knew just how poisoned the blade was, had expected Casey to shy away from the knife, to falter once it connected.
She's fought lost causes before, and now? What's there to lose?
She picks her moment, and dives off the precipice.
She's all of two feet away, treading water, as he breaks the surface.
"I've got her, go back!" she reaches quickly for Elena's slumped form, both of her hands underwater. Vampires are more fox, more hyena, than shark. She hopes the water will obscure.
She tries to keep the weakness off her face, keep her shoulders back, her eyes clear. Someone competent and strong enough to handle this part so he can focus on another.
He hesitates, looking between her and Elena as she actively takes hold of her. She cuts her eyes to him sharply, certain he won't make it down in time, before he dives back under, impossible to follow with his dark hair and dark clothes.
She crosses her arm over Elena's chest, shying from Elena's bruised ribs, and tilts her head back to rest on her shoulder, trying to keep them steady. There's a disquieting unreality to it, touching the doppelgänger. She hopes it isn't damning. A fly willingly diving into a spider's web.
She should make for the bank, but she needs to know, she needs to see Stefan break the surface with an alive Grayson Gilbert in his arms.
But what if Grayson tells him to grab his wife's body – what if he doesn't know Miranda is dead – what if he gave into the water once Elena was rescued?
What if this – this risk – is entirely pointless?
Stefan reaches the surface, with Grayson issuing gut wrenching coughs, in his grasp.
"Is she breathing?" Grayson chokes, immediately on Elena. "Is, is she-?"
She shrinks without answer. She knows Elena will be fine, but she doesn't actually know, in this moment, if she is, if she's breathing at all. Had the doppelgänger died here, before she died here?
"I can't tell," she jostles Elena's weight higher as he swims closer, pushes the strands of hair off her face, skates his fingers to the pulse of her neck.
Stefan stays outside the loose perimeter as Grayson starts to slide his arms around Elena, and they trade her weight. She's mute when she's supposed to tell him to focus on himself, that she can take Elena or give her to Stefan. She keeps her face open, her movements small, surrounded by predators. She sinks incrementally, neck straining to keep from going under.
Grayson maneuvers Elena to align her back against his chest. One hand encircles her throat as he performs something like the Heimlich maneuver. Her body jolts, spewing water.
The doppelgänger remains slumped and unconsciousness.
"I'll get her to the bank. Do you have a cell phone? A car?"
She nods wordlessly as Grayson gathers his strength, forces his will.
"Tell them Dr. Gilbert needs an ambulance for his daughter at Wickery Bridge," he instructs, waits for her immediate nod before he starts swimming backwards, Elena tightly enclosed to his chest, and his other arm on a backstroke. He doesn't head for the much closer bridge, made viable by the high-water level, and the large, jagged hole torn out of its side. That would require assistance. Grayson instead swims for the muddy embankment, the red gloom below opening up between them. Shards of white oak drifting by.
"Are you alright?" Stefan Salvatore asks her, made near stranger with his dark hair flattened against his forehead.
It takes her a moment, to focus on him, to think about what she should do now. One catastrophe, one rescue. One change. And her, still here.
It's like she expects the water to engulf her, to drag her down to even the scales. She's marooned, in the face of nothing. Breath still in her lungs, pain in her veins.
She drifts slightly, blocking his view of Grayson and Elena's retreating forms. "I can manage.” She looks away, prepares herself to make a bald entreaty, for him or her, wondering if he realizes that Grayson doesn't want them to follow. “Can you help me climb up the bridge?"
He looks between the bank, and the bridge, and her. She doesn't have the strength to wait, treading water while his world realigns, while he refocuses. She asks without waiting, and so reaches the bridge first.
She pulls in a breath in preparation before stretching to get both hands braced on to the wooden slats, the splinters pressing into her fingertips. Black veins have spider-webbed from the wound and crawled up her forearm.
She hardly clears half of the height before she starts to fall back. Her bad arm, the poisoned arm, burns with licking fire, the nerves screaming. She chokes back her cry, tears leaking as Stefan's hands catch her at the waist, keep her raised and anchored as she breathes shakily. His touch is more jolting than Elena's. She hadn't been prepared to be touched at all.
He asks if she's okay, but her heart is hammering in her ears. She fights the urge to slacken in his grip, to let herself sink, and instead pulls herself up on bloodless, throbbing fingers. Her elbows shake as she gets her chest flat against the bridge, crawling until her knees hit the deck. She lays there, cheek pressed against the cool saturated bridge, breath burning her upper lip. She weakly rolls onto her back and stares up at the pitch black, clouded sky, wondering again, if this is it.
Stefan pulls himself up by the strength of his arms alone. She lolls her head in his direction to see he's all in shadow. Black hoodie, half-zipped, black shirt, dark jeans, and black boots that barely make a thud on the wooden slats as he climbs to his feet. How inhuman, to not need to strip layers, to make it in time. A predator dressed for hunting.
He offers her his hand.
She doesn't want to take it. She doesn't want to move again.
She shakily stretches out her left hand, and takes his help to stand again on bare feet.
"Are you..." he trails off as her knees lock to keep from buckling. What adrenaline she had to get her this far is draining through a sieve.
"Thank you," she breathes, her shoulders dropping with the effort. She's cautious with her stride, notices Stefan keeps his hands slightly spread at his hips, as if waiting for her fall. He flexes them at her glance, flattens them against his jeans as he looks away, eyes pulled towards the embankment. She looks over the rail but can't spot Grayson or Elena. Nothing but water and trees. Legolas what do your elf eyes see...
She can only make out what's in front of her. She passes her sandals without realizing.
"I'm sure they're...fine," she broaches, muscles locked against the shivers working out of her chest. She's dripping wet, sundress uncomfortably plastered, hair heavy on her back, straining her neck. It feels like she's sweating under it all. Fevered. "He might need a moment to...explain what happened..." she trails off, not naming Miranda, not letting on what she knows. It depends on whether Elena has gained consciousness and how forthright Grayson intends on being. She wonders, is it safe for Stefan to be alone with Grayson, to be on Grayson's radar? How far does gratitude stretch when you've been conditioned to think all vampires are enemies?
She hadn't considered the ramifications of Grayson Gilbert living, only that it would change things.
Stefan nods, hands flexing slightly in front of him before he stuffs them into his jacket pockets. He’s subdued, as broody as expected, with what’s been drudged up, out of the lake. Likely stuck on how is this possible?
Stefan's eyes slid to her when they reach the asphalt, lingering on the protective way she's hunched over her arm, holding her elbow with her left hand. She doesn't realize he stops until his question comes from behind, not alongside, her.
"How badly are you hurt?"
It feels like her veins are being grated. The ache sinks into her bones and sinew, the tightness in her neck makes every movement pulse, her head jack-hammering.
"A little worse for wear," she summaries.
His forehead creases.
"The wound on your hand...it looks like blood poisoning."
She turns her arm up to the encroaching, spider-webbed danger. Her blue fingertips. She curiously watches his reaction, doesn't see the predator in it, and wonders if, to him, it smells of rot or sickness. If she smells of oncoming death.
"It sort-of is. Poisoned." There's no telling how her body will handle it's magic, slow it or speed it up. She's surprised to be alive at all. "I need to find out if Sheila Bennett is in a helping mood."
His mouth parts, but she turns away, heads for the silver Mercedes haphazardly parked and only slightly pulled into the shoulder. She slips through the open driver's door and reaches, achingly, for the cell phone in the cupholder, with the blade gleaming in the passenger seat.
Her vision spots as she dials blindly. Accident. Wickery Bridge. One unconscious, in need of ambulance. They’re on the south embankment, no I'm not with them. She drops the phone when she's done, takes a moment to look up at Stefan, a stride away from the open door, brows drawn tighter, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
"Sheila Bennett?" He asks.
She picks at her yellow sundress, pulling the plastered fabric away from her thighs with her fingertips.
"Magic problems require magic solutions." She looks down at the damage, sees blackened veins have spiderwebbed past the elbow joint. Perhaps mundane medicine could save her as well, with amputation. Likely not though.
His brows furrow.
"Do you often talk about magic with strangers?" There's some deniability in his voice, the way he says 'magic' as supernatural creatures are wont to do when they're pretending to be human. But he's curious and wary at the candor, eyes tracking hers as he tries to read them.
What he's really asking, or at least wants to, is why me? What do you know about me to be this honest?
And there's an easy answer, sitting ostentatiously on his finger. Her eyes drift to his ring. "I have an eye for jewelry."
His hand twitches, instinctively protective if she were to guess, as he gives her opposite hand a cursory glance. Neither of her two rings have a lapis lazuli stone to match, but it's a good instinct to wonder if they too are magical in nature.
"The guy you saved, Grayson Gilbert," she inclines her head towards the lake. "He has a ring too. A Bennett talisman that protects the human wearer against supernatural death. It also tends to make the wearer act...invincible...around the supernatural."
The expression on his face is pure skepticism, his brows up. “A resurrecting ring...that protects against supernatural death..."
"An heirloom of Jonathan Gilbert, from Emily Bennett," she recites "You might remember killing him?" His expression becomes as still as a statue. "If you check out his gravestone, you'd see the inconsistency. It drove Samantha Gilbert mad, which led to her murdering your family member in..." She blanks, pictures it but doesn't know how to communicate the image.
He lets the prompting hang for a moment before sighing. "1912," he offers, scrubbing his palm over his eyes and then through his hair, causing it to spike. He looks more familiar that way.
"So, if you're planning on seeking answers be on your guard," she stresses. "He thinks he can kill you and you can't kill him."
His lips scrunch slightly as he narrows his gaze thoughtfully.
There's more there than she could possibly gleam from just seeing a daylight ring. An opening, on why she thinks he would seek out Grayson, or why she happened to be parked here as their car went over the bridge. She waits, resting the side of her face against the head rest, knees pulled up into a huddle. The leather slicks with the water still dripping from her, and her hair feels water-sealed to the side of her face. It's itchy, but she doesn't have the energy to push it away.
"How serious is it?" He lifts his chin slightly, arms crossed again at his chest.
"Deadly."
His arms loosen, and his eyes track the black spiderweb veins creeping up her arm to her bicep. "Why did you jump in?"
She attempts a shrug, feeling heavier and heavier. "Took a gamble.”
"On your life?" He asks quietly.
With all that she knows about him, it surprises her still, to have his empathy directed at her. A stranger with strange behavior and strange words.
"Can't always pick the stakes," she says just as quietly, closing her eyes.
"And you don't want to risk...vampire blood?"
Her eyes scrunch, slow to catch the implication. For that she peeks up at him, vision momentarily hazy. "Not in the way you think." She smiles slightly, as his eyes glance down, wishing not to be read. "You know how...there's some things your blood can't cure? It’s not judgment thats keeping me from asking.”
He exhales, arms across his chest easing. She hadn't realized he was keeping his distance, to not spook her.
"But Sheila Bennett can help you?"
“Hopefully.”
She bows her chin to her knee. Stefan watches her, hears fatigue and resignation in her voice.
"You know," he starts slowly "saving two people from drowning... it's a nice final act, if you don't believe you can be saved."
She minutely shakes her head, thinking back to Marie’s words ‘good thing you didn’t want to then’. She hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t given it a thought until she was drop-kicked into Mystic Falls. "We must be remembering who did the saving differently."
He make a noise in his throat, not quite a hum or a sigh. “Just one more question?"
"Shoot," she offers, against the the whirl of approaching sirens.
"What are you?"
She swallows. There aren't any words for what she is, for what's left.
"Nothing, anymore."
The lights, blue and red, flash behind her eyelids as the ambulance arrives.
Stefan stripes out of his hoodie, pulls the soaked material around her shoulders. "I imagine you still want to avoid the hospital," he says in an undertone, arranging the sleeve to drape over her arm.
She honestly thought it was too late. It was likely the paramedics would take her away, and her reality was to lose an arm, to be butchered, far gone at that point, in twilight sleep.
"Are you sure you can make it to Sheila's house?" he asks her, seeing her befuddlement, at his touch, his help.
"I... don’t actually know where it is," she admits, whisper quiet.
He's close enough, even in the dark, for her to make out the dark green in his eyes, the outline of his dark lashes. She had realized she couldn’t make it herself after pulling herself up on the bridge. Somehow, Stefan sees that, and sees her. What she was doing, what she didn't ask.
He pulls the jacket around her, until it meets in the front, then leans back, eyes on the squad car and ambulance. "It's probably best if you move to the passenger seat then."
He approaches the two EMTs and the officer getting out of their vehicles. Whether they see her or not, whether Stefan can cover for her, she decides to try, carefully moving the sheathed dagger to the floorboard, and then shuffling across the center console. She forces her eyes to stay open once she's situated, searching for Stefan's form, trying to read the body language of the EMT he's pulled to the side.
She jolts when he opens the driver's door, realizes she's been floating between consciousness.
"How long has it...?" she turns her face into her shoulder to cough.
"Not long," he starts the engine, the keys already dangling from the ignition. "I had to convince them it was better for me to take you home."
"Very convincing," she agrees, as he stopped them from approaching her at all. It helps that it's a small town, that the focus is on Grayson and Elena.
"I might have also compelled them," he admits, almost testing.
"I thought you couldn't, on an animal diet," she mumbles, half confused.
His brows furrow, and he changes his grip on the steering wheel. "I... can. It's just not as strong, and as long as I'm not...forcing someone to do something they aren't open to, it's fine."
She wonders how much of compulsion relies on the recipient’s openness, and how much can be cajoled by his demeanor, his word choice. Is it innate to his personality, that he can stretch his powers when he's weaker, or something that developed because his compulsion is weaker?
Her thoughts tangent and worsen her headache.
He must have looked over because his voice softens. "Do you need help staying awake?"
"Definitely not," she mumbles.
"Of course not," he agrees, deadpan. "Do you mind if I use your phone?"
She blearily pulls the phone, Marie's phone, out from under her before handing it over, listens to the one-sided conversation as he asks Zach for directions to Sheila's house.
"Brown wood with a blue door," she mumbles, picturing it. She knows what the inside and outside of Bonnie's house, Sheila's house, the Boarding House, the Gilbert house, the Lockwood house, the Forbes house, the Donovan house looks like, but she doesn't know how to navigate to any of those locations. Could hardly believe she made it to the bridge at all.
When they arrive at Sheila's house, she knows she drifted off again because she doesn't remember the car stopping, and Stefan is at the passenger side with the door open, squatting and lightly touching her face. She can feel the press on his thumb on her chin, his fingertips on her cheek.
"Your lips are blue," he observes somberly.
Her lips press, her breath weakly wheezing through her chest. "The dagger." That's all that's important, right now.
Her left hand stays gripped to the back of his shirt, nearly all her weight leaning against him. He turns his shoulder as if a pillar, and his right palm briefly touches her back before moving a hairsbreadth away.
The harsh florescent light blankets the porch in a glare as they wait.
Sheila answers the door in pajamas and a bathrobe, a disapproving twist to her lips and an evaluating glance thrown over their waterlogged appearance. She stays behind the doorway.
"And who are you?" She directs at Casey, keeping both in her sights.
"Casey Shannon," she murmurs, her left-hand tightening on the back of Stefan's shirt, unseen.
"Stefan Salvatore," he reciprocates.
"Mm-hmm."
"You might not remember me," Stefan leads politely, offering his hand, balanced as far as he can put it. "but we met in October of 1969."
Sheila's looks down at his hand with raised, penciled brows, as if asking ‘sure you know what you’re doing?’ "Yes I remember."
She trusts in her own power should it be a ploy to pull her onto the porch, so she grasps his hand.
They both turn to her once the handshake is over, waiting.
She grimaces, follows his lead, given no alternative.
Sheila's eyes sharpen on hers, not dropping her awkwardly stretched left hand as quickly. "I'm not sure what you are, but I can feel you're in pain."
"Yes," she agrees woozily. "And in need of a flushing solution."
Her brows raise "To flush what?"
She realizes the black jacket pulled over her is in the way, so she tries shrugging it off. Stefan reaches over and pulls the fabric aside, letting Sheila see the black veins crawling up her skin. Sheila tracks them from her hand to the base of her neck.
"Poison," Sheila declares.
Stefan hands over the sheathed dagger.
Sheila studies it in a careful grasp, as if she's handling an artifact more than a weapon.
"Snake venom?" she guesses, spying the ouroboros carving on the handle.
More of her weight leans into Stefan's side. "No. It's a blood poisoning spell, but the dagger is coated in werewolf venom."
The ouroboros was a typical 'I'm a servant of nature, everything in balance, all actions righteous and justified' witch motif. And misleading in case someone wanted to dispel the poison. Let them look in the wrong place.
"Werewolf venom," Stefan murmurs under his breath.
"Try to suspend your disbelief," she whispers out of the side of her mouth.
"What have you done for it?" Sheila tilts her head curiously, watching the interplay.
"Pray?"
Sheila's eyes narrow further, probably at the breathy, flippant quality of her response.
"Vampire blood?" She glances meaningfully to Stefan.
"Won't work."
Sheila hands the dagger back to Stefan and crosses her arms. "You tried it?"
"No, but werewolf venom would turn it to acid."
Sheila purses her lips. "I haven't heard of that."
Implied, as an educator and long practicing witch is that, because she hadn't heard of it, she doesn't believe it.
"I've seen it," she answers flatly.
"Hmm."
Sheila taps her fingers against her arm, gives her a longer evaluating look. "I don't think I have the ingredients you're after."
It takes a long, incomprehensible moment for the words to register.
She just assumed that Sheila, a long alcoholic would keep flushing solutions on hand. But maybe not. It's not like it's a pleasant way to sober up, and it requires wanting to be sober.
If not Sheila, she doubts anyone else has the right ingredients or know-how to prepare it in Mystic Falls.
"And there are no hidden apothecaries around here, I'm guessing?" she questions numbly.
"As far as I'm aware, I'm the only practicing witch in Mystic Falls," Sheila responds, though she can barely hear her. Stefan's hand is curled around her waist. She doesn't remember her knees buckling.
...something else?
"Do you have...ginkgo biloba?" She grasps the first thing to come to mind, wishing she had more of her faculties, could think.
Sheila shakes her head. "I'm sorry, but I haven't kept a real garden in years, and medicine has never been my area."
Stefan’s voice drifts through on a fog. "There's a stabilizing spell I saw in Bastogne." He quotes something, but she's unfamiliar with the language, and her ears are buzzing.
"Maybe," Sheila murmurs thoughtfully. "How long did it stabilize them?"
"Days, if it was below freezing out."
"Are you sure it worked on blood poisoning?"
"Yes," Stefan answers firmly, a witness.
"Casey," Stefan pulls her closer, his head ducking to try to catch her eyes. "Casey," he calls again, somehow farther away.
"Well, it didn't cause another seizure, and she's conscious, so I'd say it worked. For now," Sheila announces aside to Stefan, as she blinks awake, groggy, and weak, laid out on a couch.
Her head isn't quite as pounding, instead reduced to a low throb. She carefully stretches her fingers, feels that her rings have thankfully not been removed, and that her nerves sting where before she had lost feeling completely. The pain level is too subjective to measure. It's just relieving to not be all-consuming.
“What happened?” She wonders.
"You nearly died on my front porch, forcing me to invite a vampire into my home, and now you're still alive because of Stefan's triage spell."
There's an open first aid kit on the coffee table, and her quasi-bandage from her shift is rolled into a bloody ball. Bloodier than it was before.
Sheila's head tilts, her tone changing at she looks down at her thoughtfully. "You were in and out of it a few times.” She pauses. She doesn't soften exactly, but she's looking at her with a more open interest. “You told me I needed to start teaching Bonnie what it means to be a witch before I die," Sheila's thin brow raises slowly, and she leans closer. "And to let her know there are better virtues than self-sacrifice."
Sheila waits for her response.
"Oh," she answers lamely, "is that it?"
Her lips tighten, but her eyes look amused. "That's all you said to me."
She drags her eyes to Stefan. He tilts his chin in acknowledgment but doesn't give much away.
"And what does a non-witch with premonitions, a poisoned knife, and rescuing Grayson and Elena Gilbert have to do with each other?" Sheila interrogates.
She's still working on that.
Why here, why now, for god's sake why the doppelgänger?
"How much time have you bought me?"
Sheila cocks her head, not as put out by her avoidance as she expected. "Less than a day, unless you put yourself under a stasis spell."
Sleeping Beauty spells were tricky enough with healthy participants.
"Thank you," she sighs, weary still with what's ahead. It's still a delayed execution.
Sheila nods slowly in acknowledge and doesn't look away.
She twists her lips wryly.
"I was poisoned because I had a premonition about the accident, and I shared it. Someone thought I would interfere with the doppelgänger and decided to..." she inclines her chin towards the dagger.
"And this premonition?" Sheila probes.
Sharing premonitions obviously hasn't worked out for her, but...it's already happened. It's already not-happened.
She glances at Stefan, who observes in the armchair farthest from the blood on the table. "Stefan was meant to rescue Elena. And Grayson died at the bottom of the lake. I didn't really help...I couldn't dive that far, but...I got there in time to take Elena so Stefan had a chance to rescue Grayson as well."
Sheila takes a fortifying breath like she's trying to dispel her anger. "There are things after that girl..." she shakes her head, lips pressed tight, "and with that comet coming to pass..."
"The comet?" Stefan leans forward.
"One you should remember Mr. Salvatore. The last time it passed over was in 1864, a time of a lot of blood and carnage in Mystic Falls," Sheila shakes her head. "That comet is a sign of impending doom once again, and I fear things aim to repeat themselves."
"Magic enjoys repeating verses," Casey agrees, starting to reluctantly sit up on the damp couch. She tests her arm and finds the ache minimal. She moves delicately.
"You think the comet means things are going to turn out like 1864?" Stefan questions carefully, his voice modulated. She can tell he's not convinced the way Sheila and Casey are, doesn't have the sense of knowing, the familiarity with witchcraft to accept superstition.
Sheila hmms, but looks at Casey curiously. "Tell me your take on it."
Casey sits back against the armrest and rubs her forehead with the fingertips of her left hand. “Which part?” She asks ruefully. “1864, a Forbes was Sheriff, a Lockwood was Mayor. Now, a Forbes, by marriage, is Sheriff, a Lockwood is Mayor. The Founder's Council decided, will decide, to actively hunt vampires, with the same tactics. 1864 Katherine Pierce had the loyal support of a Bennett witch and the love of both Salvatore brothers. Repeat with Elena." Stefan's brows furrow, though she only notices in a short glance.
"A son breaks his werewolf curse in 1864, also to be repeated in the same family. And..."
She debates not saying this part, but Sheila and Stefan are probably the best people to impart this to. Both of them are listening. "Emily used the comet for a spell, and with it passing again, the ward she made will be broken."
"And what was this ward for?" Sheila narrows her eyes like a bloodhound. Casey looks to Stefan, wondering if this is the right way to tell him.
She continues carefully. "Katherine...orchestrated the vampires being rounded up, to be subdued instead of staked, so they would be pushed into the church, and the church burnt" she looks away when his hands tighten, realizes it's better if she doesn't look at him, giving him some privacy to process. She looks back at Sheila. "There's a tomb under the church where they're sealed. All of them but Katherine, who used the fire and the tomb as a double bluff so some would believe she perished and others would think she was trapped, desiccated in a tomb, unable to escape."
It's quiet for a long moment, and Stefan's head is bowed, his jaw clenched.
"So, during the last comet a tomb closes, and with the comet coming back, the tomb opens."
"And the vampires let out with it," Sheila hisses "with scores to settle."
"Yes," she agrees, because for most of them, they did. Or will. "Emily's spirit destroys the talisman, but there are people desperate to get into that tomb, and you paid the price of bringing down the spell."
Sheila stares at her piercingly before slowly nodding. She understands what price she paid.
"Vampire problems," she huffs, almost companionably.
Casey smiles slightly, glad at least to give a warning to someone sensible enough to take it. (She won't say that most of these problems are because of Emily). This is her thank you.
She starts to climb to her feet, wary of dizziness, knowing she shouldn't push anything classified as triage. She needs to make it to Richmond.
Sheila stands with her and offers her left hand, so Casey can shake with her uninjured one. She's surprised at the gesture, wondering what to read into it, but takes it with an equally firm grip.
"It was...interesting meeting you Casey. I would like to see you again at a more reasonable time."
She accepts the friendly chastisement, offers an ambiguous, "We'll see."
Sheila offers her hand to Stefan as well. "It was a risk offering your hand to me, and I appreciate it. Take care of yourself."
"Thank you," Stefan returns.
Casey take up the abandoned dagger, uneasy to be toting it again as she leads the way out.
"Get that wound taken care of, and let me know if you survive it," Sheila tosses in farewell, morbid if not for the spark of impishness, of some lost youth of the woman Stefan must have admired in 1969. It's comforting, in that Sheila believes she'll pull through, treats it as a certainty. Or hides the uncertainty well.
The poison and the pain is still lying in wait.
She peeks at Stefan's reflective mood, in the soft quiet of the sleeping street, decides to lean her back against the side of the car instead of reaching for the handle, meeting his gaze when he looks over in question. She gave Sheila enough. But not Stefan.
Whatever he wants to say, to ask, she wants to give him the opportunity before they part.
He joins her, half a foot from brushing shoulders as he folds his arms across his chest, dropping his shoulders and looks up at the night sky. She inclines her neck back as well, searching for something familiar.
"Katherine's alive," he murmurs after a companionable quiet.
She waits, doesn't confirm it, doesn't know if he's even asking her to.
"And Damon thinks she's in the tomb. He plans to return to Mystic Falls to try to..." his rubs at his eyes, chest expanding on a sigh "rescue her."
There's a wealth of history in that sigh, the frustration clearest - that Damon knew all this time and never let on, that his brother wasted 145 years on a pointless quest, for a woman who didn't deserve it. The bonds of brotherhood are still there, that he can be upset at Damon and for Damon at the same time.
"And you apparently saw Damon and I replaying 1864 with Elena instead of Katherine," his jaw tightens, eyes down as his shoulders curl forward. "Her doppelgänger who lives in Mystic Falls at the time the comet is meant to pass over again, when this tomb is supposed to open."
"Life is full of coincidences," she replies, not looking at him as she says it. She's gone through this before, seen others at the fork in the road between unhappy knowledge and content ignorance. Knowledge has a way of rarely, if ever, granting peace.
She looks over at him, the opportunity to accept or denounce the threads of fate, it in her waiting expression.
He turns towards her, eyes searching and heavy. "Right," he agrees, nodding slowly, making his choice. "Why not suspend my disbelief? Believe that comets are harbingers of doom. Werewolves are real, and -" he flicks his hand, gesturing to all the rest.
She smiles, peeking down at her bare feet to hide it. "Yes, well... I'm sorry your 160-year life has been so un-magical you didn't know werewolves were real."
He frowns deliberately. "I prefer to believe in things I know people have seen. Werewolves are like...Ninja Turtles. Or dragons."
She peeks up at him, tilting her head to keep hair out of her face. "You know one of those is real, right?"
He squints, waiting for her to break. "I don't believe you."
Her grin turns impish. Oh, if only there was a chance of convincing him Ninja Turtles were real, she'd keep him on that hook. "It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons."
He tries not to smile, ducking his chin when he's unsuccessful. "Oh?" he asks with all exasperation, "here be dragons meant here, actually, be dragons?"
"That depends on the map," she answers, obviously.
He shakes his head, stretching away from the car. "Perhaps you can point out these dragons on the way," he offers.
Her mouth drops. "Are you...offering to drive me to Richmond?"
He matches her uncertainty, realizes there's a disconnect between where they each thought they were going. "Not if that isn't what you want..." he answers slowly.
"I just didn't expect you to...I mean, this is one thing," she means Sheila's house, helping her this far. She grips the fabric of her dress in her uninjured hand, her other still stationary across her waist, as if in a sling to keep it immobile. "But Richmond isn't a few blocks away. I wasn't going to ask you to disrupt your life more than I have already."
She's unable to meet his eyes while she tries to cool her embarrassment, looking instead at Sheila's porch. Does she know we're still here?
She hears Stefan's stance change, facing her more directly. "I'm still offering," and leaves it there, kind and understanding, and waiting.
She pulls in a deep breath. "Thank you," she says quietly.
She swallows hard when they both turn to the car, realizing it's not just a wet dress she has to contend with, but one splattered with the blood that dripped from her hand. She doesn't want to force him to endure it for two hours, in an enclosed space.
"Do you think we could stop by the Boarding House first? Maybe change clothes?" she bites her lip as she asks, worried he'll guess why she made the appeal.
"Okay," he agrees.
She feels like she should say something, because jokes about suspending his disbelief aside, there's a lot of turmoil in that brooding forehead of his. What to say though?
"Stefan?" She calls over the roof, still at a lost when he looks over at her. "The thing about comets being harbingers of doom? They're not really. They're just snow and ice," she echoes something he hasn't had the chance to say yet. He had said more too, that they're just following their destined path, trying to return home every 145 years, that they're alone. That she leaves behind. "You can subscribe all sorts of meaning to it...make of it what you want."
It doesn't have to be any one thing, or any one way. It doesn't have to be tragic. She doesn't want to leave him with that impression, especially when he once looked at it with something like promise, hope, the start of something epic.
Something inexpressible relaxes on his brow. His eyes drop, and when he looks at her again, there's a thank you there that makes her smile.