Written 2013 by VeGirl
I got up and walked right past Stefan to get out into the southern spring air. I squinted towards the bright sun, thinking about how different everything could be like if I never had gone on this trip in the first place.
"The sun is a little brighter today?" Stefan asked with a challenging look on his face while he held up the door to his old Porsche.
"No, it's perfect." I said, but the smile I intended came out as a frown instead.
My head was starting to hurt by now and I was wondering when they would give it a rest. I didn't say a word until the 'thank you' when he opened the car door for me to get out. That was a really sweet thing that Swedish guys don't really do, and it made me feel pampered. When we arrived at our destination, I waited patiently for Klaus to open the door after I knocked. I gave Stefan a glare while I stepped over the threshold.
"Emma!" Anna came and gave me a hug. "Just the one I wanted to see." Surprised she looked up at Stefan, standing patiently by my side. "Why is the wrong Salvatore with you?" She joked.
I sighed. "Because my boyfriend is with his girlfriend." I said annoyed, nodding towards Stefan. By now Klaus joined us looking surprised to find Stefan flanking me. They shared some silent conversation that I guessed had to do what was going on, but I ignored them.
"Do you have an aspirin, I have a headache." I hissed to my friend.
"Whispering won't help, I can still hear you." Stefan said clearly. "And neither will the aspirin, I'm afraid."
I glared over at him, really shooting daggers.
"What's going on?" Anna wanted to know.
I sighed and gave Stefan another glare. "They think I'm in transition." I told Anna.
"Transition?" She asked, and the next second she knew exactly what I meant and instinctively took a step back, while Klaus took a defensive step forward.
That was when I lost patient. "Not you too!" I said and my eyes were pooling up with tears.
Klaus put his arm around my shoulder and led me to the couch. "Tell me what happened." He prompted and I told him all I could remember.
"I didn't see what it was in the woods, I just felt pain in my neck, and when I came to; everyone had lost their mind." I said sadly as my eyes were starting to water. Klaus just smiled at me as if I was a little child; honestly I longed to just sit there being held and comforted by someone, even Klaus would do.
"At least you're not afraid of me." I pouted.
Klaus chuckled soft. "No, I can take you down anytime, luv."
"Finally someone who can joke about it!" I smiled and nodded towards Stefan. "And now I can't leave the house without this body guard."
Klaus laughed. "Yes and what better companion could you have, but the Rippah, to show you the real life of being a vampire?" He breathed darkly with sparkling eyes and it felt ominous the way he pronounced the ripper.
I remembered seeing Stefan's work on TV, while I still thought that it was just acting; now I shuddered. "But how will I know?" Whispering I asked Klaus, finally thinking what if they were right?
"That will soon be obvious." He said. "When you want to rip your friend's head off."
I gasped and looked alarmed at Anna.
"So this is a really bad time for me to ask you to take your friend in?" He had a teasing expression.
"They're shipping off Esther." Anna explained. "So I'm taking my room back at the Boarding house, if that's okay." She asked Stefan.
"Perhaps not the best of times... but."
"I am not in transition!" I yelled. "It's your damn arguments that are giving me a headache!"
"Let's see shall we!" Klaus got that mean competitive look and snapped his fingers for some girl to bring him a glass of blood. Suddenly I sat there with a tumbler of blood in my hand. "Cheers luv!"
I looked down in the glass with the red liquid, thinking of the times I had been so nauseas that my head spun. I thought about those times I wanted Damon to turn me. Was this really happening; was this my defining moment?
To be or not to be?
I looked up at the people standing around me, with encouraging or alarmed expressions, and then I looked down in the glass again. "Come on!" I said. "Wouldn't I like... crave it if I was turning?"
They looked surprised at me.
"You know Stefan, like when you couldn't resist the smell of your father's blood."
He looked hurt. "It wasn't like that!" He said and I thought; yeah right!
But then I realized that they couldn't have filmed the actual event since it was hundred and fifty years ago. We hadn't discussed it, so I really didn't know.
I sat there looking bemused at Stefan when Klaus took the tumbler from my hand and gulped it down. "So, could Anna stay with you for the next week or two?"
Now I looked at him as if he had lost it. Here everybody else treated me as I was a monster or a glass-figurine; I wasn't really sure which and he just ignored the panic.
I wasn't really sure of what surprised me most. "Sure you can stay!" I said. "If I could only have an aspirin?"
Anna smiled. "Sure!" She left us to pick up her stuff.
"What if I go after her?" I hissed to Klaus with his tee grasped in my fists as soon as she left the room.
He looked down at my hands and I quickly removed them and straightened out his grand-dad tee. "She can take you down!" He smirked. "...making your headache way worse..."
I looked astounded at him. "So you think I'm in transition too?"
He sighed. "Well, you still smell mouth-watering, but your pulse isn't annoyingly loud anymore, luv."
My mouth fell open and I slumped back against the backrest of the couch. Could this really be it? Suddenly I felt extremely tired just thinking about it. "Wouldn't my gums hurt and all that?"
Klaus just chuckled as I searched for my pulse to check if he was just teasing. I looked up at Stefan who had taken a seat in the opposite couch where he seemed to watch my inner struggle. "How can I walk in the sun?"
Stefan rolled his eyes. "The transition isn't complete until you drink human blood." He explained, but I already knew that.
I was getting more and more annoyed with myself by now. This was after all what I had asked Damon to do to me, why was I hesitating? "Okay, let's do it!" I said and reached for the glass which had some drops of blood left. "Will this do?" I asked to the alarmed looking Stefan and the smirking Klaus. When the glass was almost on my lip I remembered something. "Wait! If I do this now, I can't go out in the sun, right?" I asked the questioning faces. "We have to go grocery-shopping first!" I said resolutely and put the glass back on the table, just when Anna came walking with her suitcase.
"Here you go!" She threw me the bottle of aspirin and I shook a couple out.
Klaus poured some whiskey in the glass I just held in my hand and reached it to me again. "Here you go luv!" He smirked as I glared at him. Over at his liquor table I spotted a bottle of water and with an answering glare at Klaus I walked over to use that to gulp down my pills with.
"Okay, good luck then!" Klaus got up and said good bye to Anna with an affectionate hug and a light kiss, while Stefan took her suitcase and we left.
The backseat of Stefan's Porsche was not really designed for adults, but more for small children... without legs; despite that, I squeezed in and we got to the small store in town. I couldn't handle the bigger Aldi or the Food Depot with this headache.
There was so much I wanted to buy, I was getting hungrier by the minute it seemed, and I just filled the trolley with the strangest things. I had never wanted fried chicken wings more in my life than this day, and the apples looked delicious! When I started to put birthday cake and minced meat in the trolley, Anna questioned my sanity.
"The cake is for dessert after we had spaghetti Bolognese!" I claimed with my hands held up defensively.
"No, you can't have the cake! Let's get some bread!"
I almost growled at her when she put the cake back and that was when I realised that Stefan must be right; this was my transition! I stared at Stefan who just gave me his famous 'I told you so' shrug with the eyebrows. "How long do I have?" I asked alarmed.
He just smiled. "The sooner the better."
"What?" Anna asked.
Stefan put his arm around Anna's shoulder and spoke quietly to her. I watched them as Anna's eyes widened and she looked alarmed at me. "Do we have to hurry?" She asked me.
"How would I know? Ask someone who'd been through this!" I snapped and then I apologised for the mood swings.
I hurried with the trolley, throwing random things in it as we passed shelves, until Anna took over the shopping. Stefan and she had some silent conversation going where he encouraged her to take over the shopping while he took over my supervising.
"Oh, don't forget orange juice!" I called for her as Stefan put his arm around my shoulders and led me away. "...and cheese!" I yelled as she walked away from us.
Stefan held me tighter around my shoulders. "Perhaps we should go outside for a moment?"
"No, I have to get some cookies as well." I explained and tried to get away from his grip. "I have to get cookies!"
By now people started to look at me and wonder what was going on. Stefan did his best to look apologetic and gesture with his hand that I might have gotten a little too much to drink.
"Hey!" I objected defensively I was definitely not drunk!
Anna did her best to get the trolley through the cash-register while Stefan paid and got me out the door. By now I was jittery and grabbed whatever from the bag and chewed it down as Stefan drove us home.
I hardly made it through the front door and into the parlour. "Okay, let's do this!" I yelled smirking. "Hit me with some soccer-mom!"
"Emma, what the fuck is wrong with you?" Anna yelled at me.
"I'm fine!" I grinned like a madman, throwing my hands up in the air. Suddenly I started to shake uncontrollably, it was as if I had burned my candle in both ends and there was no energy left.
"What's going on?" Anna called, and in no time I had Stefan and Damon by my side, grabbing me and leading me to the nearest couch.
Everything went even worse when my headache increased from a swish to a roar and my breathing felt like somebody was sitting on my chest or squeezing me hard, making it impossible to take a deep breath. In that chaos I thought I heard Elena scream if they were sure this was what I wanted and then I felt a glass on my lips, forcing liquid in my mouth.
The second I swallowed the first drop, everything exploded; flashes of light hit my eyes and I was able to draw a deep breath. A shock reverberated throughout my body making everything crystal clear.
My ears could hear sounds far away; my nostrils could detect scents that I thought was impossible. My pallet was suddenly highly sensitive and I could easily separate tastes of coffee and a dark chocolate spice in the blood I just swallowed. I had no problem in knowing where everybody in the room was just by sensing them and when I opened my eyes I was blown away. I had always had twenty-twenty vision, but now I could see a spectrum of colours that I had never seen before.
"Wow!" I breathed.
I turned towards Damon and the love I felt for him before had magnified to the extreme and I knew instinctively that I would never leave this man.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So...
Now Emma is a vampire....
.