(CHAPTER ONE :
IF THERE'S VODKA)

✧࿐ ཾ✧

MYSTIC FALLS, VIRGINIA [2011]

DISBELIEF. I GLARED AT Damon Salvatore after he voiced what he was planning to do and if I were to tie a neat little bow around his entire scheme, it would be classed as a suicide mission. As annoying as his constant sarcasm and disregard for my feelings could be, the two of us were good friends—or acquaintances as he preferred. Therefore, I wondered why he even considered devising the demise of the most powerful vampire family when he was fully aware it would put him in harm's way and hurt those who cared for him in the process.

"Damon," I began, his name rolling of my tongue with remarkable easy as I had to repeat it that many times over the past century. "Is it your plain stupidity and recklessness talking or are you simply a one hundred and sixty year old suicidal vampire?" I questioned him, sarcasm thickly coating every word.

"Lottie," he mocked, folding his arms over his chest. "Is this you declaring your undying love for me by saying, in your own special way, that you love me?" Damon asked, per usual, imagining scenarios in his head, ones that stroked his own ego. As if to test the waters, he winked seductively at me.

I widened my eyes an inch, walking over to pour myself a Bourbon after suffering through his antics. I deserved a drink. "No, I was wondering if you are stupid or suicidal. It was a straight forward question and your lack of comprehension makes me think the answer is both." I corrected the older vampire, hesitating before deciding I didn't need a glass, I needed the bottle after Damon's proposition. "Joking aside, I don't want you to get hurt. Elijah hasn't got the best track record when it comes to trust, you might be the one with a dagger in your heart by the end of it." I explained my concern to him, remaining calm and collected when I did so. Then, I necked the bottle of bourbon, naturally.

Sighing, the Salvatore approached me, snagging the now empty liquor from out of my hands. "You're being paranoid." He mused in a sing-song tone, pointing the Bourbon bottle at me. "It's cute, really. But, I have been doing this vampire thing far longer than you and I would know if he was lying to us. Don't act as if I am an inexperienced vampire, it's offensive." He spat his words so they were pointed and sharp, almost as if him raising his voice would make me quake in my boots. Of course it didn't, I'd looked far worse things in the eyes than Damon Salvatore and lived to tell the tale—in a way, at least.

Groaning, I knew what I had to do, I used this particular pity card at least one thousand times with the man, but he fell for it every time. "I understand, Day. You're older and know better, even if you weren't I'm only a lost little girl that doesn't remember most of her past." I murmured, looking out of the Boarding House window longingly for effect. "I mean, I'm insane, right? I have large, gaping holes in my memory. I know nothing, absolutely n——" I complained to him, biting down on my lip, attempting to pull out all the stops. Apparently, it worked wonders as Damon jumped to interfere before I could continue with my anguished ramblings.

"Fine." He grinded his teeth together, glowering in my direction. That was the one thing he hated me holding against him because he actually sympathised for the fact I often had memory blackouts. "I'm not changing my mind, but please, rant as you wish." Damon urged, using his hands to motion that I should continue telling him how much of a disloyal, immoral fool Elijah Mikaelson was.

Grinning, I flopped back onto the old couch. "Gladly." I smirked, patting him on the head before providing myself with a moment to dramatically clear my throat.

"I said I would listen, now hurry it up because some of us have a social life, ergo have plans to be late to." Damon rolled his electric blue eyes, managing to find a way to insult me still. Whether it was via insulting me or making himself appear desirable, he always managed to inflate his moon-sized ego.

I cocked my head to one side, challenging him to discredit my 'social life' further. "I never knew murder counted as having a social life, but I'll join you if there's Vodka." I chirped, knowing that I much preferred Vodka to Bourbon, but the Salvatores appeared to only stock the latter. "Now, stop distracting me. As I was saying, Elijah can't be trusted—under no circumstances." I bluntly stated, prepared to whine about how unreasonable he was being by unquestionably trusting the Original. "Honestly, I fail to understand how you suddenly think he can be a useful ally to us, we were both in agreement not long ago. Why do you suddenly wholeheartedly trust him?" I refrained from shouting, but it was extremely difficult to hide my frustration with the careless vampire.

"Ah, but you are mistaken there." He wagged his finger at me. "I don't trust him. I see him as leverage and optimise his cluelessness. I highly doubt he even knows who killed Mommy Dearest, all I have to do is swoop in with the truth and then it won't be long until he won't even want to associate with his brother." Damon countered, going into the details of his spectacular plan—one that relied far too much on assumptions for my liking. "Don't mistake a mutual interest between two people as trust."

Impatiently, I huffed. "Do you not see that either way he will screw you over?" I snarled, unable to fathom what I would do without my best friend at my side. "Trust, no trust, either way, you need to rely on him for your plan to work." I reminded him of the key fact he had skimmed over deliberately. "And, when it is all over, I will be the one laughing in the face of your corpse after you've put yourself in the firing line, again, because of your utter lack of self-preservation." I found myself unable to take a single breath, rushing the words out so they all strung together into one, inaudible heap.

The dark haired vampire chuckled in amusement, confident that tonight would be smooth sailing. Truthfully, a lot could go wrong and he didn't feel like worrying about a 'could' for it was not certain. "Your faith in me is astounding." He had commented with a slight bitter twinge becoming prominent in his tone that was intended to ooze satire as opposed to sourness.

"It isn't about faith, it is about your rash tendencies." I rectified slowly, talking to him as if he were young, incompetent child—without a doubt he had the common sense of one. "You don't ever consider the consequences. For once in your life, think ahead, please." I pleaded with my friend, apprehensive in concern to the events would surely unfold catastrophically tonight.

Damon raised an eyebrow at me. "I do apologise, I seemed to have forgot that you were a prime example of responsibility." He snorted, referring to how precipitous and thoughtless I was back in the day. "Don't try and be my brother, the entire reason we are friends is because we both do stupid things and don't care that we do it." He recalled fondly. Yet again, he ignored what I had to drill into his mind time and time again. I wanted to banish my imprudent lifestyle of the past and move on as a more independent and established woman.

Narrowing my eyes, I remained silent as I turned on my heel and left the Salvatore Boarding House. In all honesty, I would have loved more than anything to escape this damned town. All the conditions that came alongside residing it drained me. 'It's Mystic Falls, nothing bad ever happens here' was the probably the biggest lie I had ever been told to date and were also the first words Elena Gilbert said to me. It wasn't humorous, more ironic that not even a week later the supernatural had made a playground of Mystic Falls. Considering I was a creature of the night myself, I was in no position to criticise. In my humble opinion, it was rather pathetic how the quaint town was terrorised and ripped raw by the supernatural.

I couldn't leave though, no matter how badly I desired to be anywhere apart from this little town. Something kept my here, an unnatural force, because a part of me knew that I had a purpose. There was no coincidence about the arrival of several vampires in one short, enclosed period of time. Instinctively, I knew I had a reason to be here and that it was time for me to move on from the pain of the past. In the twenty-first century, I refused to allow myself to be hopelessly in love with the man I couldn't even remember the name of.

No more. I had to be my own hero.

✧࿐ ཾ✧

PORTLAND, OREGON [1908]

Every minuscule movement could be felt—from the grotesque bugs that crawled on top of my bruised and battered body to the unsteady, slow thumping of my broken heart. Everything could be felt, everything had been magnified and it made me want to scream. But, nobody would hear. They couldn't possibly as I was confined to four wooden walls, some kind of crate or casket. I was buried alive, I realised.

Whizzing by at a remarkable speed, cars charged ahead, the distant and excited chatter of people buzzed through the static air whilst I rotted. Somehow, I was decaying underground and nothing above ground had changed. Nobody cared about my whereabouts, clearly. Maybe I should had been more fazed by the peculiar instance that I could hear conversations when I was six feet underground, perhaps I should have been shocked about my suddenly impeccable hearing. But, I wasn't. There wasn't enough time to focus on any of that, there wasn't never enough time for anything. My priority was left to concentrate on breathing. Ignoring the deafening ringing sound in my ears and the ice cold temperature of my body, I focused on my breathing. It was the only thing that reminded me I was alive.

Flick. Then, like an elastic band that had been held back for too long, I allowed myself to implode. I was completely aware that I was going mad, I knew it from the moment that I had began to desperately claw away at the cheap wood of the box, chips flaking off with each scrape and scratch. Frankly, I hated feeling how I did. I hated how I had failed to keep my composure in the intense situation, I hated how I was panicking profusely and I hated how my emotions were building up inside me at a dangerous pace. Like a spider's silk web, my emotions were tangled into one intricate and complicated spiral. They were manic, all over the place even. However, anger prevailed over the others, my rage being stronger than those of fear or anxiety. And the only way to control my wrath would be to release it. Even taking myself by surprise, I clenched my fist and threw it directly upwards. Harder. Stronger. Quicker. Eventually, three holes had merged into one human sized one. Perfect for me to squeeze through.

I did it. I squashed myself upwards and ignored how the splintering casket wood ripped at the expensive fabric of my fine dress, holding me back in the process. Not that quitting crossed my mind once. I knew that had to push upwards and break through all the dirt soon, only permitting my body to surrender to the exhaustion when I could breathe again.

Once I had escaped, the air felt fresher and more valuable than it was me to before. After fighting through layers of mud, grime and waste, I was free from the confinement of the coffin. Presumably, by the way the sky had long since darkened, it had taken me a fair hour or two to pass through. Now I was here, I didn't know what to do. From what I could remember, it was the early hours of the morning last I was aware. That was obviously before I, somehow, ended up buried alive. I didn't even know how I should feel about being buried alive. There was not a natural reaction to that, it was just a rather odd occurrence. Since the traumatic experience, I had felt different. Despite how distressed I was underground, I wasn't overly afraid.

I should have been afraid.

✧࿐ ཾ✧

Sometimes memories of my past played back in flashes, like a moving picture show. They were always short and barley lasted a few minutes, but they always seemed to impact me more than I would have liked to admit. I never wanted the life I had, some parts of the first few years I turned were still fuzzy, but who ever had the life that they wanted? My past had haunted me for a century, it continued to do so to this day. The memories when I was both a human and after I turned plagued my dreams and reality. I couldn't escape my past, as hard as I tried.

Most of the time, I hated being a vampire. It was a curse, there was no other way to put it. No vampire could hide from their past, myself being a prime example. Then there was the blood lust, without a doubt that was the worst thing. Everybody I ever killed had appeared in my nightmares at one point or another. All I could think was they surely all had families, a family that I corrupted and stole from them. Everything was just so overwhelming. The tears lasted longer, the pain was more intense and everything was amplified. I learnt if I built a wall and then another and another, people would eventually stop trying to break them down.

Oh how I hated having memories. All they did was unnecessarily hurt me, but I knew I deserved the torment in repentance for my sins. 

✧࿐ ཾ✧

A.N: I am trying to do regular updates for this rewrite because I want to share this revised version with you all. If you happen to like it, please comment and vote. I'm doing this because it is important for me to only ever be 100% happy with what I post online. This is terrifying for me and I genuinely hope everybody enjoys it.