MONSTER, stefan salvatore [2]

Do You Remember the First Time?

She winced as pain shot through her body, her stomach being far from healed from when he had shot her with an arrow. But she couldn't think of herself as the first priority. She grabbed a pocket knife next to Kai's dead body and drove a knife through the restraints she had been forced to have over her wrists. 

Bonnie grunted as she threw Natalie's arm around her shoulder to help her walk, she was still very weak from the only blood she had drunk being stock-full of vervain. "Hey, I got you, I got you. I'm here."

Natalie's eyes darkened as Bonnie had gotten too close for being a human with a still-healing wound next to a hungry vampire. The veins under her eyes became easily visible as she hissed, her fangs growing. The witch sighed, because she would have easily given Natalie her blood if it wasn't for the fact that she had vervain in her system. "You can't drink my blood, Nat, I'm sorry. It's the vervain, okay? We're gonna get some blood in you."

"My- my blood, it will- it will heal..." Natalie trailed off, seeming as if the thought of speaking and keeping her vampire face out was too exhausting for her to do together, causing her to not be able to do either of them. 

Bonnie shook her head as she led the taller brunette towards the car. "No, no. We're gonna have to get some blood in you first, okay? Then we can, but if I take your blood now, you're going to pass out and that's gonna make things a bit harder, okay? I've got you, let's go."

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Mystic Falls Hospital

As a human, Natalie had never understood why vampires would be attracted to the thought of drinking blood. Of course, she knew it was a necessity for them to survive, but the thought of just doing it because you can was repulsing. Why drink blood when you can eat chocolate cake? But then she became a vampire and she understood the pull towards it, the taste didn't really have that much to do with it. It was just the feeling and the euphoria one felt once they downed the blood was remarkable. 

Having been a vampire for a year and a half, Natalie had tasted blood before quite a few times. But no time felt better than when she had gotten to the hospital in that prison world and downed three blood bags quickly. After feeling so weak, filling up with blood and getting to full strength was the best feeling she could think of. 

Her first thought when she was finished with those three blood bags and felt herself get as strong as she had ever been, was to look over at where Bonnie was standing to get a feeling out of how she was doing. It wasn't good. She was trying to change her bandage around her abdomen, but she was clearly in much pain. 

"Don't, Bon, don't," Natalie stopped her before her vampire face made her second appearance that day with a reassuring smile as she bit into her wrist to allow blood to flow out of the puncture wounds. Bonnie seemed hesitant, but finally allowed herself to take a little bit, even if she didn't really want to become a vampire or anything because Kai would probably kill her. 

Bonnie looked over at the clock that was ticking above them, praying that it was working correctly so they could be as accurate as possible. She noticed that it was 10:45. "An hour and 43 minutes. We can do this."

Natalie nodded with a fake smile, hoping that her friend would feel reassured from it, even if she had no real faith that they would be able to do what she wanted them to do. She sighed as Bonnie pulled out all the pieces of the Ascendant. "Let's do this, we don't know when he'll come back, or when he'll figure out where we are."

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It had taken a while, but the vampire-witch duo had finally been able to assemble the Ascendant with the pieces that Bonnie had managed to scrape together. Every few seconds, Natalie glanced worriedly up on the clock. The time was ticking, and she was sure that if they didn't get out during that day, they wouldn't get out at all.