Disclaimer. Everything you recognize does not belong to me. I only own Lana Lewis and her version of Katherine Pierce. I get nothing from publication, and all the rights go to the show's producers. My ideas, however, belong to me, and I have full rights to them.
Summary. Lana Lewis died believing that this would end all her suffering. However, she doesn't expect to reopen her eyes; more importantly, she doesn't expect them to be someone else's eyes. She now has some words in mind that will accompany you for a long time. Every Action Has Consequences.
Somewhere before episode 22
of the first season:
It was strange how every action and choice immediately provoked countless unpredictable and indeterminate chain reactions.
An elderly lady walked with two shopping bags in the direction of her house. It was cold in Mystic Falls on that evening at the end of February, and her light coat did not help keep the cold out as her arms and hands began to ache from advanced arthritis. She was still a couple of blocks away from the warmth of her house when she made the choice that sealed her fate.
If only the old lady had chosen to take the traditional road, none of that would have happened; if only she had not slipped into an alley that cut the neighborhood obliquely, in less than five minutes, she would have returned undisturbed to the warmth of her home and the wasted arms of her husband. If, if, if... if only that vampire weren't there.
The old lady turned into the narrow alley undisturbed. She ignored, due to fatigue, how her dress had collided with an old piece of steel protruding from the wall and how it had cut her skin, causing a few drops of blood to gush quickly due to diabetes.
She was already thinking about what to prepare for dinner when a pair of hands squeezed her arms, dropped the bags, as she was picked up and moved further down the alley, her back to the wall at speed so fast it couldn't be real.
She came face to face with the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Her blemish-free face of her olive contained a small nose, accompanied by two large doe eyes and slightly parted plump lips that almost brushed her nose. It was framed by soft, defined, and harmonious chocolate-colored curls, which seemed to almost float around her and surrounded her with a beautiful and strong perfume.
«Don't scream», the angel-faced girl told her, her voice low and melodious but tense and almost desperate at the same time, and she found herself unable to do it - or even want to.
«I don't want to hurt you, you know? But that's all too much: I scent your smell, your blood flowing, and I want it; I crave it more than anything else. But you don't understand, do you?», the angelic voice stopped, almost cracking. «I shouldn't try these things; I couldn't. Yet I do, and... I don't know how to stop», she whispered desperately.
«Try it, then», whispered the old woman, so taken by the angel's words that she didn't even notice how his eyes were no longer in her but on her neck, which she stroked with one hand.
«They hurt. They hurt so much, and there are so many in my head. I just want to order them, but I can't; why can't I?», the angel asked her again, as if she wanted - no, as if she needed - an answer.
«It will all be fine. It will pass. How can I help you?», asked the old woman, desperate like her, gasping in need to help her, to make her feel better.
The angel's eyes returned to hers. «I'm sorry. I'll try, I promise, but I need it», she whispered in a broken voice.
The old lady wanted to tell her something more, but she widened her eyes when she saw the girl's angelic face change, as her eyes darkened and red streaks appeared under her eyes, along with some sharp canines between her teeth. And while those same canines stuck in her neck, the old lady thought that if she died too, she wouldn't mind because she was sure that there was something divine in her existence, so that that beautiful avenging angel could exist. And as her strength left him, she only thought that she would see her two children again and, perhaps, she would finally find some peace from the pain she felt. She only had one regret, and it was her Phil of hers waiting for her at home.
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.
And from that moment, it was as if something had unlocked as the headache assailed her.
She leaned against the sink, clutching her hands around the ceramic, breaking the edges and crumbling the material.
They were flashes so intense, so vivid. It was as if Lana was reliving them. It was as if she were there and could touch and feel them at three hundred and sixty degrees. It was as if she was Katherine.
She was assailed by memories that weren't hers.
She resented a little girl. She saw how she was brought up, how she fell in love for the first time, and consumed her first time.
She watched how she got pregnant, how her heart was broken by the young boy, and how her family had pushed her away.
She resented giving birth and felt all the pain of not being able to hold her son, of not being able to hug her at least once or caress her innocent face and see her, feel her, in her first moments in the world, out of the loving womb of her mom.
She observed her parents kick her out of the home and saw her uncles hesitantly welcome her into the house. Then, she saw herself at a dance with two brothers, one who took her breath away, the other who wanted to keep her close. And she felt the betrayal and the moment when her heart really broke, as she abandoned love and embraced distrust.
And she felt herself kill herself and then run, run and run. And betray. And turn off. And don't feel.
She felt flashes of something, moments of emotion, but each time colder, more hardened, until the difference between off and on no longer existed.
She felt something when she saw herself meeting the one who would be her best friend for a long time. And she felt something when she snuck into a young green-eyed boy's room, and then ... and then she felt an authentic feeling for him, but that wasn't enough either.
But then she saw the first moment her eyes met the bluest ones she had ever seen, the more innocent, the deepest, the most sensational her gaze had focused on in more than four hundred years.
And she didn't know if it was her, just Katherine, or a mixture of the two, but she loved those eyes; she was consumed by them. And as she saw the slaying of the two, she felt divided as her mind made them review, feel the pain of the death of the green-eyed boy, but her heart now ached for those two blue eyes open and turned towards the sky and never pain in her heart it was more significant.
The last few flashes were more monotonous, calmer.
She saw herself following the younger brother over the years, and all she wanted was to get away and find the eldest, the current holder of her heart. And then she saw her descendant, her research, her manipulation to have her on her side, the werewolf, their nights spent together that nothing made her feel, not to her, not to Katherine, not to Lana, not to whoever she was now.
And then she heard. It was not a clangor; it was not a sound, not an emotion, a memory, a scent ... no, it was the sweetest and most tempting and sensational scent she had ever tasted. And it wasn't the first time: she knew it, she had seen it. But fundamentally, this was it. After all, this was the first of her.
She didn't understand how: she acted impulsively.
She rushed out the window and landed in front of that old lady, who dropped the envelopes as she was pushed against the wall.
And she was tired, and the headache was still there, and her mind was trying and trying to tidy up, but she couldn't fit in; she couldn't catalog Lana, Katherine, either as one or as two separate entities. She only wanted one thing –the only thing that would give peace to that burning in her throat.
And she apologized and suffered, but she still let her canines pierce the older woman's neck. She let herself be savored, and her strength returned.
She seemed to last a lifetime and, at the same time, only a second. She felt like the longest and the shortest moment together. She let her taste buds relish the blood and allowed her body to regain its strength and readjust what was damaged until her ears caught a moan and the older woman's legs began to give way.
She pulled away quickly, her eyes filled with panic. Beyond what her mind remembered, it was the first time she had lived it. She looked for the heartbeat, and when she found it, though slow, she didn't think for a second before biting her wrist and placing it in front of the older woman's half-open lips.
It was strange, different, and a part of her belonging to those new memories, trying to assert itself as the main one, almost had the impulse to stop her, let the woman die, and drain all the blood from her body. But that part now had to live with the newly acquired one, and the new one was much more powerful and persistent.
«Drink», she ordered, relying on muscle memory to use the compulsion.
The older woman listened, and when she was stable again, she turned her eyes into her beautiful angel's eyes, but she couldn't say anything like before.
«Come home, don't remember me, never think of me again. All this never happened», the angel ordered.
And the old lady repeated it, and then there was no one else besides her in that alley. So, she resumed walking with her feet leading her back home, with the envelopes back in her hand and a trickle of blood left on her shoulder. And maybe the actions, the choices, had consequences, but some of them were still controllable.
On the other hand, the girl had returned to the place where she had woken up.
"Choices, how funny!" she found herself thinking.
She saw so many of them in her memories now sorted, healed, and rearranged, thanks to her blood.
She found herself giggling. Oh, how many bad choices she had made. She knew it. She saw it. And maybe the curse of the doppelganger's charm was the cause of it all. But now she was here, and perhaps now she could do something.
She wrapped her hand around the necklace she wore around her neck, and even though it wasn't hers, not Lana's, what she felt was no different.
She had been given another chance; she didn't know how or why; maybe it was just a dream, her mind's imagination as it died, even though everything she was feeling was true. In her mind, it felt so real that it took her a moment to remember that she hadn't really experienced them. But maybe that was her personal hell, the punishment for her actions.
She didn't know, she couldn't be sure of anything, but if it were true, if it were real, then she wouldn't be below expectations.
She thought back to the last words her ears had caught before collapsing on the mattress in her dorm room, and she thought how true they were.
She made up her mind while she still held that necklace. She would not have been a passive being in that universe: she had the position to right so many wrongs, and she would take it, reclaim it.
"Every action has consequences", and for the first time, she didn't want to run away or find herself in another place. No, she felt she was in the right place for the first time.
She had a lot to consider; she had a lot to plan, prepare, and frame. But first, there was something she had to do.
She sat down on the desk in the room and pulled out a well-embroidered old notebook that she had no idea why it was there or how she knew it – she didn't even desire to look for the answer in her new memories.
She also retrieved a pen and opened the precious old notebook to the first page.
She put the pen on the paper several times before finding the words to write.
And when she found them, her hand didn't stop for a long time.
The words began to gush out the ink and on the notebook with fluidity, and soon, the pages started to fill up.
"Dear Katherine Pierce,
It's time for you to change... "
______________________
Hi. I hope you have appreciated it and that any grammatical or lexical errors did not bother you too much.
Soon
-Bree