Dear Katherine Pierce || Damon Salvatore

0. Dear Katherine Pierce, it's time for you to change

She thought that, after all, she was a burden to pay because as her body was deprived of her life force, she felt tremendous bliss, and never before had she felt so alive.

***

Lana Lewis wasn't sure what really happened.

One moment she was watching her favorite TV series, the next, she was killed, and the following, she still opened her eyes to feel healthier, more alive, than ever.

Her head felt heavy, as if a million pieces of information were waiting to be configured into a new order.

But it was as if they kept getting confused, but they didn't understand how there could be so many. Lana could almost feel them moving in her head as they tried to figure out how to order themselves so as not to overlap the information already there.

The 18-year-old opened her eyes, confused and disconnected. She looked around, trying to focus on anything that might make her understand what was happening. And then, in a second, she saw it all: the specks of dust swirling around the room, the ripples in the walls, the cobwebs on the ceiling, and the colors... oh, the colors that her colorblind eyes had never seen.

She was so engrossed in really seeing for the first time that when countless sounds reached her ears, she couldn't help but jump. She put her hand to her chest and looked around again, but it was like the sight, and in an instant, her ears caught everything: the car horns, the voices of the people beyond the road, the birds, the owls, the owls, the crickets, the wind, the tires, his own heart.

She got out of bed with a quick jerk.

But she couldn't dwell on how her speed had been so too much, so exaggerated. She didn't even think about how her leg no longer hurt or how her ankle could hold her weight even without a crutch as she walked, dazed and overwhelmed, around the room.

She didn't dwell, couldn't. Her head was registering memories that she knew were not of her, memories that she had partially seen on her computer screen but now had another perspective, another realism, and so many emotions.

She trudged into the room to a door. She didn't know how, not yet, but she was sure there was the bathroom beyond. She needed to breathe, calm down, and understand. And that damned sting in her throat didn't help.

She walked over to the sink, ignoring the light switch, ignoring the darkness, which had never been so bright, even after hours of deliberation. She turned on the tap and let the water gush while cupping her hands under it, catching some. She threw the water on her face to calm down and find lucidity. But there was nothing that could help her – nothing – while a flash of a pair of blue eyes and then green eyes made her head spin and her stomach quiver.

She inspired, continuing to wet her face, continuing to shake, and-

She looked up. Oh, she wishes she never did.

It was almost comical how that moment upset her. She could see a confused, stressed, and painful look in the reflection she saw, a reflection that contained no soft blonde curls nor hesitant, sad green eyes. No, beyond her reflection were long hazel curls, large brown fawn eyes, surrounded by long lashes and olive skin where she was sure she had been pearly white before.

But it wasn't the most shocking, either, not the most devastating, and not the most ... absurd.

It wasn't the change in appearance that surprised her; it wasn't the expressions she received from her reflection, so distant from her but simultaneously so similar.

No, it was something worse and even stranger because she was sure that looking at her dazed was the reflection of a barely eighteen-year-old Nina Dobrev, a confused, young, and stunned Nina Dobrev, a Nina Dobrev who was sure she looked too much like in wardrobe and hair to one of her most famous performances, the hapless, selfish, survivor Katherine Pierce.