CHAPTER 22: TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART
Whitmore College
Sometimes Natalie seemed to forget one of the largest parts of being a college student, and that was actually having to take classes. Luckily, the one she was about to take was Sociology, which she had with Caroline, Bonnie and Elena. And as usual, Caroline was not able to keep herself from talking about something or the other.
"So we all agree? No more moping about life's little failures and no more dabbling the dark arts of boyfriends past. This is a fresh start," the blonde rambled, and as she glanced over to Natalie, she nodded as if she had actually been paying attention.
Elena's face broke into a large smile, her head nodding as the person inhabiting the body seemed to agree fully and completely. "Couldn't agree more. I happen to love fresh starts."
"Um, I haven't been moping or dabbling." Bonnie pointed out, seeing as other than Natalie, she was the only not single one. And when you're not single, you're usually doing this other than moping and/or dabbling. And those things often occurred in the bedroom.
Caroline rolled her eyes, hoping for sympathy from one of her best friends instead of her pointing out that she wasn't as miserable as she was. Although it was definitely the truth. "No one likes a bragger, Bonnie."
As the four sat down, Caroline decided to hold her short speech, which seemed like she had been rehearsing for hours in front of the mirror (or, at least that's what Natalie would have to do to be able to do that). "Today is the dawning of a new era. This is stage one of our metamorphosis into the land of the brave, the free, and the single."
"Bonnie's not single," Caroline was reminded with the voice of the vampire doppelganger sitting next to her.
"And neither is Natalie," the former huntress added, frowning at how Elena seemed to have deliberately forgotten to mention her when they all knew about her relationship with Stefan. She thought her twin had moved past it by now.
"Bonnie and Natalie's best friends are single, which makes her single adjacent. So they can be our wingwomen." Caroline handed each of the girls a flyer each for something called a bitter ball.
"Whitmore's Annual Bitter Ball, a night to celebrate broken hearts, jilted lovers, and bitter singles," the doppelganger read out loud, seeming to not be a big fan of the idea. "This is our fresh start?"
The blonde vampire gave her a look, wanting her to show some more enthusiasm. "No. This is our purge, our cleanse. This is where we rid ourselves from the baggage better known as our tragic and mortifying first semester."
"I'll drink to that."
"Cheers!" Natalie exclaimed with a large smile.
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The Door Room
Natalie smiled as she walked through the door to the her dorm room, listening to Stefan saying some stupid pun about whatever. She quickly waved at Caroline and Elena. And her boyfriend quickly started to get a more serious tone of voice.
He sighed as he knew he had to tell her, and was guessing he wouldn't get the chance to talk to Elena any time soon. "Listen, there's something I need to talk to you about and maybe you could talk to Elena or something, but I didn't want to do it over the phone."
Natalie glanced over at where Elena and Caroline were surely listening in and decided to spare them the trouble of hiding it and put him on speaker. "Sure, what's up? And by the way, you're on speaker so keep it PG."
She could hear Stefan snicker from the other side of the call, but decided to quickly keep his serious facade up, so he could tell them what he planned to. "Let's just say it involves Enzo."
"Ugh, ew," Natalie basically groaned the words out.
"Then maybe we should meet in person. Actually, Caroline's dragging us to this Whitmore thing for lonely hearts," Elena's voice was heard saying, sounding more like Natalie remembered her speaking when she was actually dating Stefan. She didn't like it.
And so she sent Elena a passive-aggressive look as she started speaking over her. "Yeah, I need a way to keep all those lonely hearts from hitting on me. What better way than to have my boyfriend come."
He did not seem so onboard with the idea as he heard the strained tone of voice his girlfriend had and understood that she was most likely kind of pissed deep down. "I'm sure you can handle yourself. And, besides, I already did the college thing. Twice actually."
Elena did not seem to get the idea of Natalie getting really annoyed at how she seemed to be getting dangerously close to flirting with Stefan. "Please. If it's bad, then I'll owe you a fun time."
Natalie rolled her eyes before sending Caroline an incredulous look, only to find the blonde raising her hands in surrender.
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The Bitter Ball
Natalie had ended up getting to the dance a bit late as she still had a paper to finish, and she had totally forgotten about it. But when she finally finished, she quickly threw a black dress on her body, leaving her newly cut curls stay as they were, which was kinda messy.
But she had hoped to find Caroline and Elena as quickly as possible, but it wasn't hard to notice the flash of blonde hair through the crowd of black clothes, and she looked over to where that head of hair was going, and saw Elena and Stefan dancing together. She took a deep breath of annoyance.
When she finally got to them, she could hear Stefan speaking with Caroline. "She's all yours."
"And I'm all yours," Natalie quickly spoke, throwing her arms around his neck affectionately, a large smile as she noticed a low groan coming from behind her (and she was so sure it was Elena, and it confirmed a few of her suspicions).
Stefan seemed to ignore his ex-girlfriend and decided to focus on his current one. He smiled down at her softly, not a grin like hers, but just one that always seemed to be on his face when he was around her. "And I'm yours."
They both knew it would be weird to just stand there, so they started swaying with the music. It being the first time they had danced in quite some time. Natalie hummed with the song playing, as she liked it quite a bit. "So... what were you and Elena talking about?"
He looked at her, getting ready to lie and tell her that it was nothing. But she seemed prepared for it, and raised an eyebrow at him, showing her she wasn't playing. "Damon fell off the deep end."
Natalie frowned as she struggled with keeping up with the beat of the music, wondering what he could have done that would have been qualified as off the deep end. "What do you mean exactly by deep end?"
"For starters, he killed Aaron," the elder vampire told her, seeing her eyes grow wide like saucers at the mention of Damon's actions. She didn't think he would get that far in that short period of time.
"Why don't you want to tell her? Are you afraid she'll give up on him?" the brunette girl asked, glancing after where Caroline and Elena was leaving the shredding station. She then met his eyes, and knew what he was about to answer.
He nodded. "Yeah. I know she will. And I don't think I can pull Damon back from that. I mean, I've seen Damon at his worst, Natalie, and I actually think he enjoys the way it makes him feel. It's like the more pain he can cause, the more reasons there are for people to hate him. He wants to confirm everyone's lowest expectations of him and I just honestly don't know how to fight that side of him."
"Why all the dramatics, brother?" a voice quickly broke their conversation up, and they ended their dance. They found Damon standing with something looking like a pissed off Bonnie Bennett on his side.
"What are you doing here?" the younger Salvatore brother asked, sending his brother the kind of harsh look he hadn't given in a long while, a few months, maybe.
"Oh, don't worry. I'm not her date. We're not going to break any Bitter Ball rules," Damon joked, making fun of what he knew would be the two's best friend's enthusiasm about the dance.
Stefan's jaw tightened, a the glare on his face getting harsher, as if he was trying not to snap his brother's neck. "How about you just answer the damn question?"
Damon chuckled, seeming to find the entire situation funny. "Well, Bonnie is going to find me a witch to do a locator spell on the elusive Dr. Wes Maxfield. She's going to find him, I'm going to kill him. Bon-Bon, should I tell them?"
"Enzo has Jeremy. If I don't get a witch to find Wes by midnight, he'll kill him."
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It had been a while since the last time, but Natalie was sure she had an epiphany. She finally seemed to understand that Damon Salvatore was a huge asshole who she wanted to punch in the face. But she prided her in her restraint, because he was only a few meters away from her, and she had kept her head cool.
But how could he have kidnapped Jeremy? He was about to let Enzo kill him. Kill her and Elena's kid brother. She knew he was having a few issues, but none bad enough to send him over the edge like that.
She sighed as she watched Bonnie repeat the spell she was trying to teach this blonde girl named Liv, who was a newbie witch Bonnie had found during sociology class or something. Natalie just wanted to know how they always found themselves surrounded by the supernatural.
"I can't do this! Don't you get it? I've done horrible things. I've set buildings on fire, I've hurt people. I can't control any of it." Liv seemed to have given up, looking at Bonnie and Caroline. She probably had tears in her eyes, but Natalie couldn't even stand to look at her. She had her brother's life in her hands and the thought of giving that power to a stranger terrified her enough for her own eyes to fill up with the salty liquid.
She glanced over at where Damon was on the phone, most likely with Enzo, Natalie couldn't strain herself with listening in, because she was having such trouble with keeping her anger with Damon repressed. And there was a lot of it.
"They seem to have lost motivation. Maybe you can inspire them," Damon spoke, a small smirk on his face. If she didn't know better, Natalie would have thought that he had turned it off. But she wasn't stupid. She knew he didn't have to turn it off to go off the deep end. It made her even angrier that he was able to go through with that when he had his emotions.
Damon put the phone on speaker, making sure that the witch and the former witch and now current anchor thing could hear as well as the other vampires. "Let them know that Jeremy will be dead very soon," Enzo threatened way too cheerfully.
The 175-year-old vampire hung up, not an emotion present on his face, the face that Natalie had only ever wanted to punch more once in her life. The moment when he saw her draining the life out of her mother.
The 19-year-old shook her head, pushing herself off the chair she was sitting on, an incredulous look on her face as he tried to ignore his better judgement. "Damon, what are you doing? Call him off!"
"I don't listen to you anymore," he said. Without any reason he seemed to have turned against the person he had promised he wouldn't leave. And all that was because he couldn't handle a break-up.
Natalie stepped closer, giving him a teary eyed glare. He couldn't escape her when she stood there with so much emotion, and he had to fight to show none. "Why? Because I happen to share the same DNA as your ex-girlfriend? Listen here, suck it up and don't go off the deep end every time you don't end up together again. And look at me, because I'm your best friend. Not him, not anyone, me. Just call him off. It seems like I've lost you. I don't wanna lose another brother."
He swallowed harshly as he tried to bury all kinds of feelings that he had for her. He couldn't just give up what he wanted because of his best friend. He wanted to, but he couldn't. "Cooperation is not optional."
Natalie took a deep breath and backed away, and he thought he won. Only to definitely be proven wrong when she threw her fist straight in his face, making him stumble because of the surprise. "Go to hell, Damon," she spat.
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If there was one thing Natalie was sure Damon wouldn't admit at that moment was that he was feeling some kind of guilt. That's the only reason she could think of when he had finally gotten the location he was looking for from Liv and ran to get Enzo, he had decided to bring Natalie with.
Unlike him, though, she was rushing to get there. She could not handle losing Jeremy again, she refused to do it. She was sick and tired of losing people over and over, even the same people multiple times.
So she was very relieved when she saw Jeremy breathing next to Elena, who was surprisingly not holding him close and muttering curses at Damon and/or Enzo, which she did when Damon killed Natalie.
But if she wasn't going to hold him close, Natalie was still going to. She ran to her brother, and kneeled next to him, barely even registering that Stefan was in the room, rushing next to her sister's body (because she had actually been hit by Enzo's stake... that explains why she wasn't holding her brother).
Natalie grabbed both his cheeks, checking if he looked completely okay. And he did, he was alive and well. It took only a second of her to face to break into a giant grin. "You're okay. You're okay," she muttered happily, cradling his head against her chest. "Don't ever do that to me again."
"The spell worked. Wes is in Richmond." Damon looked at where Stefan was helping his ex-girlfriend with the stake stuck in her back and Natalie held her brother close with tears in her eyes. He tried to swallow his guilt, but he couldn't. He could only try to hide it for a while.
"Brilliant. I'll drive." Enzo grinned, walking straight past the people he caused pain in only that night as if he had no emotion at all. Natalie stared after him in disgust, shaking her head as she sighed.
Once Stefan believed he had gotten all the splinters out of Elena's back, he looked at his brother, debating whether or not he was going to say what he was planning to say. He eventually decided to go with it. "Hey, Damon. Don't bother coming back."
For a moment, he wasn't able to hide his emotion. His brother not even wanting him anymore definitely hurt him, especially as he was right next to the girl he loved. He didn't know what to say next, so he looked over at Natalie. Not sure what her reaction was going to be. She met his eyes for a moment, showing sadness. But she quickly averted her gaze, because she didn't want him to leave forever. That didn't mean she forgave him, though.
"I wasn't planning on it."
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The Dorm Room
Natalie knew that Stefan and Elena had already left for their dorm, and decided to give them a few moments to speak about Damon, because they had both loved him the most. But she was still not over her sister's behavior that day and came back early.
And when she found the two of them embracing she cleared her throat loudly from the door. Stefan quickly pushed himself away, looking uncomfortable with the situation. He never really seemed to have gotten completely over their love triangle. "Hey."
Natalie crossed her arms over her chest. "Hi."
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A/N: I'm really sorry about the wait. I've just been really busy (and, by the way, you guys telling me to update isn't going to clear out my schedule. It's just stressing me out. That's why I took a break in the first place). And sorry it's so short.
Next chapter will be longer. And I'm actually really excited about it. Mostly because you guys are going to hate it (and me).
Votes and comments are greatly appreciated.