"Oh, my God!" Caroline squealed as Quinn and Elena made their way over to her on the night of the football game. "You two look sooo cute!"
Elena immediately blushed whilst Quinn posed dramatically, flailing her cheerleading pom-poms.
"The ultimate power couple," Bonnie nodded in agreement. "The matching cheer uniforms are iconic."
"The only thing..." Caroline suddenly said, eyeing up Elena scrutinisingly. "Is that necklace. You know how I feel about jewellery during cheer!"
"Ah, sorry! My fault," Quinn explained. "Vic felt super bad about ruining our night the other day at the comet event so she bought Elena a necklace to apologise. She was being super weird about it like 'please make sure Elena doesn't take it off'. She might've been high, who knows at this point."
Caroline raised an eyebrow at the story, "O-kayyy."
"I think it's sweet," Bonnie commented. "If you wrap it round your ankle, you can tuck the pendant and chain into your sock while we cheer."
Caroline looked contemplative for a minute, before nodding, "Yeah, okay. That will work."
Elena grinned, "Great! Because Vicki is finally warming up to me after the whole Matt scenario and I honestly feel like this necklace is an olive branch."
Quinn snorted, "Lena, she didn't hate you because of the 'Matt scenario'. Actually, she found it hilarious."
Caroline laughed, "Who didn't? Elena has never shown any interest towards any guy, ever, and Matt thought he'd be the one to change that?"
Bonnie struggled to hide her grin, the action causing all of the girls to laugh.
"Wait! Let's be honest here," Mr Tanner's voice boomed across the crowd of gathered students, interrupting the girls' conversation. "In the past, we used to let other teams into our town and roll right over us!"
The crowd booed in response.
"But that is about to change!" Mr Tanner continued and the crowd cheered.
"We've got some great new talent tonight starting on the offence, and I'm gonna tell you right now, it has been a long time since I have seen a kid like this with hands like these. Let's give it up for Stefan Salvatore!"
"Yep, Tyler is definitely going to be seething." Caroline commented.
All the girls nodded in agreement, and Quinn suddenly saw Tyler pushing out of the giant crowd.
She watched as Tyler seemed to zero in on somebody, following his eye-line to see an unsuspecting Jeremy Gilbert sat on the back of a truck not so far away.
"Elena!" Quinn grabbed Elena's hand, quickly pulling her in the direction of the two boys. Her gut was telling her this was not going to end well.
Quinn caught sight of her sister reaching to grab Tyler's arm, shouting, "Wait, no! Ty! Leave him alone!"
"Don't look so down," Tyler jeered. "You can have her when I'm done."
Neither Quinn nor Elena barely had time to register what was happening before Jeremy hit Tyler.
Then both teens were on the floor, landing blow after blow on each other.
Victoria was shouting at Tyler, begging him to stop, "Stop, you're hurting him! Tyler! Tyler, stop!"
Her voice was mixed with Elena's terrified shouts for Jeremy.
Out of nowhere, Stefan Salvatore appeared and grabbed Tyler's wrist, "Hey! He's down, enough!"
Seemingly blinded with rage, Tyler reactively punched Stefan in the gut.
Quinn watched as fear flashed across Tyler's face when Stefan didn't react at all.
That force of a punch should have had Stefan sprawling on the floor.
Elena suddenly screamed out, "Jeremy, no!"
At the sound of Elena's voice, Stefan pushed Tyler out of the way.
Jeremy had grabbed a broken glass bottle and had swung it at Tyler, but had hit Stefan's hand instead when Tyler moved.
Jeremy's expression immediately dropped, Elena taking the opportunity to dive towards her younger brother.
Quinn's brother had grabbed Tyler to stop him from jumping back into the fight.
"What the hell, Jeremy?! Put your head up, you're bleeding!" Elena reprimanded.
"Elena, you're meant to lean slightly forwards," Quinn corrected, tilting Jeremy's head forward and allowing him to spit out the blood pooling in his mouth. "He could choke."
Jeremy jerked away from them, snapping, "I'm fine."
Elena scoffed, "Yeah, you smell fine."
"Just stop, okay?"
Jeremy stormed off and Quinn looked at Elena who suddenly looked so tired.
As if remembering that Stefan was struck by the broken bottle, Elena quickly turned on him, "Oh, my God. Your hand!"
"No, no, it's--" Stefan quickly hid his hand behind his back, a strange look on his face. "It's fine."
Elena ignored him, "Is it deep? How bad is it?"
Quinn watched as Elena grabbed Stefan's hand and forced him to open it. Both girls blinked in confusion when there was nothing there.
"What?" Quinn whispered.
"B-but... I saw..." Elena murmured.
"He missed. It's not my blood. See?" Stefan wiped the remaining blood off of his hand and showed the girls his perfectly fine palm. "I'm fine."
Quinn shook her head, "No, I saw it. The glass cut your hand!"
"It's okay, I'm okay," Stefan continued. "It's almost kickoff time, so I'm gonna head back."
Stefan quickly disappeared, leaving Quinn and Elena standing there in confusion. Caroline and Bonnie quickly joined them.
"You guys saw that, right?" Elena asked quietly.
All of them nodded.
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