04 | Wounded Souls

     𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘 packed with people, so was the backyard. Dakota walked around the house, finding someone that she knew—or rather, someone that she's close with. However, the party was beginning to feel a little suffocating so she decided to go back upstairs, where there were less people.

It's funny how she hadn't explored the Lockwood Mansion until now. But then again, she was never really that close to Tyler. They recently became friends and acknowledged each other's presence when he and Caroline got together.

The two of them didn't have history, unlike the others. In fact, she didn't have history with any of them that was remotely similar to the ones they had with each other. They grew up together in this small town. Dakota was the new orphaned girl from the city that they took in.

"Good evening, everyone!" Dakota heard Klaus's voice outside as she was wandering the empty corridors of the mansion. She approached the nearest window that oversaw the entire backyard and there she saw a sea of people raising their hands and beers to Klaus standing before a microphone on stage.

"I wanna thank you all for being here with me to celebrate." Klaus announced, earning another wave of cheers and claps from the audience before looking at a certain direction with that knowingly smirk of his. "It's been a long time coming."

Dakota lingered her gaze outside for a couple more seconds before she turned around and decided to rejoin the party. Upon approaching the stairs, her whole being jumped from being startled when she felt the whoosh of the wind and suddenly Damon was standing right in front of her.

"You cleaned up well." Damon stated.

"Klaus went a little overboard." Dakota answered, not letting her nerves calm down. She was right though. Klaus compelled a bunch of people for her to help her get ready. If it was going to be just a house party then why was she wearing real diamonds on her hair?

"Tour's over. You're going home." He said before grabbing the girl's wrist and trying to drag her further away from the party.

"Damon, stop!" Dakota protested and tried to break free from the rather tight grip that he had on her.

Damon looked up and released a sigh of annoyance before looking back at and staring far into the young woman's eyes. "Stop fighting and just follow me." He compelled.

The vampire turned back around and resumed with getting Dakota out of here. What he wasn't expecting was the fact that Dakota proceeded to fight and still refused to follow him.

"Let go of me. If Klaus finds you here, he is going to kill you!" Dakota warned.

Damon's forehead creased as he stopped in his tracks and whirled around, his suspicious gaze examining Dakota's face.

"You're on vervain?" He stated more than asked.

"You look surprised." Dakota sarcastically answered.

"I am because this was supposed to be easy and now I have to drag you out of here kicking." Damon replied, his frustration visible in the tone of his voice as well as on his furrowed eyebrows. "What, are you and Klaus besties now?"

"No, but at least he's telling me the truth." Dakota reasoned.

She had been kept out of the loop for a long time and the only reason she was even aware of all this is because Klaus came back to town.

"I'm not saying I support him wanting to hurt all of you but if I'm being completely honest, with the newly acquired information that I'm actually a doppelgänger, I think I'm safer with him than you." She explained.

Damon narrowed his eyes at the young woman, his hand letting go of her wrist before stepping closer towards her. "Are you that dumb? You are a doppelgänger and the last time I checked, Klaus's history with doppelgängers isn't exactly squeaky clean."

"I know, he tried to kill Elena—"

"He did kill Elena. She was only brought back to life by Bonnie! And before Elena, he went after Katherine and the bitch spent over 500 years running from him. The last place you could be safe is by his side, so don't be stupid and come with me!" Damon snapped before wrapping his hand on her wrist again to drag her away.

The young woman refused to go easily once again and in the process of struggling as Damon pulled her away, she attempted to punch the vampire. One can easily tell that did not go well.

Damon swiftly and effortlessly caught the woman's fist. The vampire slightly tilted his head and sighed deeply in frustration, knowing that he was gonna be forced to do something that he really doesn't want to do.

"Don't take this personally." Damon said and that was the last thing that Dakota heard from him, or from anyone or anything, to be exact. Suddenly, the dark swallowed her.

• ─────────────── •

Dakota waking up and not being where she was before she blacked out was beginning to feel normal for her. The only thing that distinguished this moment from all the others was the fact that her head was throbbing immensely. Dakota groaned, her voice even cracked in that simple yet pain-filled groan before she was able to move her head a little while still laid on the floor.

At least she still recognized the room. She knew she was still in the Lockwood Mansion. Her head shifted to the side, her eyes meeting her own when there was a mirror placed near her. Surprisingly, her diamond hair gems were still intact. But that wasn't what Dakota noticed the moment she looked in the mirror. It was the fact that the side of her forehead was cut open and bleeding.

"Dick." Dakota groaned when she remembered Damon.

She looked back up the ceiling and closed her eyes, squeezing them as if she was trying to recover from a blurry vision. She opened her eyes again, wider this time, before attempting to push herself up from the floor. A series of curses and whimpers left her lips—the pain from her aching head and her stiff neck making it hard for her to even try to sit upright.

Once she was sitting up, she took off her heels and massaged her feet. It wasn't like they were sore, but Dakota thought she might need to run if she once again encountered a similar situation with Damon or anybody else.

She took deep breaths through her mouth before finally standing up. She made her way towards the door and pushed it open. To her surprise, she wasn't trapped in the room. With the way Damon was acting earlier plus her attempts to escape him, she thought that he was gonna lock her inside somehow.

The music was still loud outside, but what baffled her was that when she reached the stairs, there was barely any noise coming from the inside. It's like everyone had moved out back. And with good reason.

Walking down the stairs, she did hear a voice. An unfamiliar one.

"The big bad wolf." Said the man, Mikael. Klaus's father. Not his true one though. "You haven't changed. Still hiding behind your playthings, like a coward."

Dakota stopped in her tracks. She didn't know who it was, but it did sound like he didn't like Klaus. And she couldn't risk being seen. Slowly, she took a peek. He was a middle aged man with blonde hair and blue eyes. His eyes held something that even Dakota could see. It was there for everyone to see. It was abhorrence.

"Oh, and you forget, they may be sired by you, but they're still part-vampire. And they can be compelled by me." Mikael said.

Dakota hid from the sight of the people that stood before Klaus, relying on her hearing to keep her on the loop. She didn't have enhanced hearing so she couldn't hear them clearly at times.

She did, however, heard a familiar whimper that could only belong to Elena.

"Come out and face me, Niklaus." Mikael taunted. "Or she dies."

"Go ahead. Kill her." Klaus challenged. From behind the wall where Dakota was hiding, her eyes widened.

"No, Klaus." Elena said, her voice shaking, her tone pleading. "He'll...he'll do it."

"If she dies, this lot will be the last of your abominations." Mikael stated.

Dakota listened in as much as she could. All that she could hear was Mikael continuously tormenting Klaus and Klaus repeatedly implying how he did not care. How he just wanted Mikael gone.

"Nobody cares about you anymore, boy!" Mikael said.

Dakota could not help but feel her heart sink. She couldn't believe she was actually feeling sympathetic towards Klaus. But from the way Mikael was talking to him, it seemed like he was the biggest bully of Klaus's life.

"Who do you have? Other than those whose loyalty you've forced? That girl, Dakota? No, you kidnapped her. She doesn't feel any loyalty toward you, and she never will." He continued to taunt. "You have no one."

"I'm calling your bluff, Father." Dakota's stained red lips parted the moment she heard him call the man 'father'. That was his dad. And he was treating him this way. No wonder those hurtful words hit deeper than your usual bully. "Kill her."

"Come outside and face me, you little coward. And I won't have to." Mikael said.

"My whole life, you've underestimated me." Klaus said. From his voice alone, Dakota could hear the resentment and the pain that she knew his father had caused. "If you kill her, you lose your leverage. So go ahead. Go on, kill her."

Dakota gathered the strength to take a look once more. Elena was being held close to Mikael, the fear and worry visible in her face as Klaus continued to rant. "Come on, old man. Kill her."

The redhead's eyebrows were furrowed in concern, anxious if the man would actually kill Elena. She was worried for her friend's life. They might not have been the ideal friends to her, but none of them didn't deserve what was happening to them. To always be caught up in life or death situations. Was this what everyone was going through while she was clueless? If so, then she understood why they didn't want her to have the burden of knowing any of this.

"Kill her!" Klaus yelled, her voice carrying deep hatred.

But all Dakota heard a few seconds after Klaus's outburst was a provoking chuckle from Mikael.

"Your impulse, Niklaus." He pointed out. "It has and will forever be the one thing that keeps you from truly being great."

There was a few seconds of silence between them. It was deafening and suffocating, the anticipation of what was going to happen next. But Dakota wished that they stayed there, in that heavy and sweltering second. Because the next was utterly cold and numbing.

Mikael stabbed Elena from the back, earning a whimper to come out of the brunette's lips and a gasp from Klaus. Dakota herself gasped at the sight. She swore she heard the knife cut through Elena's flesh. Dakota felt her entire body run cold in fear and her senses go numb. The next thing she knew, she was dragged back to hide behind the wall and her eyes were met with a pair of icy blue ones of Damon's.

"Get out of here, now." Damon said, his voice low and almost a whisper. When Dakota remained there with her eyes widened into saucers, Damon repeated himself. "Now!"

Dakota scrambled to her feet and ran. Her panting was heavy, her tears were flowing, and her mind was chaotic. She knew she needed to run, she praised her past self for taking off her heels as she ran like her life depended on it. And it did depend on it. If Mikael had no problem killing Elena, then what's stopping him from killing her next just for fun?

Dakota stopped dead in her tracks at the sound of Klaus's scream. She whirled around and stared at the Lockwood Mansion. Her eyes wide and glossy, staring at the entrance of the mansion. The front of the mansion was crawling with hybrids, watching as their master was struggling to fight Damon.

As if Dakota wasn't already bewildered and stunned enough, Elena stood up on the porch looking like she hadn't been knifed at all. She was bleeding, that's for sure. But it was as if the pain was non-existent. She faced the army of hybrids and threw something at them. Dakota slightly jumped, startled when the two things she threw exploded in the hybrids' faces.

The redhead was panting. It was all she could hear alongside her frantic heartbeat. She could no longer see what was happening inside. But it was nothing good, that much she knew.

Out of the blue, Klaus sped out of the mansion and landed on Mikael on the concrete. The next thing she heard was the man's screech before he was engulfed in flames, Klaus standing over his burning body.

Whatever was happening, it was over. She could see it in Klaus's face. Something was over. Something painful and scary and difficult was over. Dakota's feet remained firm on the ground beneath her, her eyes fixated toward the mansion, towards Klaus. She was free. She could escape. But was she going to escape? She should. She should take Damon's warning seriously. As a doppelganger, she could be in danger in Klaus's hands.

But if she really was, then why hadn't he laid a hand on her? There were multiple possible answers in that question. Dakota just wished that it wasn't something that would result in her eventual death because suddenly, her bare feet were bringing her towards the mansion.

When she got to the mansion through the front door, it was only Stefan and Klaus left inside. No sign of Damon or Elena–or rather, Katherine. Dakota's eyes first shifted toward Stefan, who looked like he was still in shock about what just happened. Then she averted her gaze towards Klaus who narrowed his eyes towards her bleeding forehead before taking a few steps towards her.

"Damon knocked me out." Dakota answered before Klaus could even ask her. "I think I got too stubborn for him."

His eyes then turned to stare far into hers. His gaze held curiosity and wonder. "Why didn't you run? By the state of your feet, I'd say you were already outside. So, why didn't you?"

"I guess I enjoy your stories of Mary more than I let on." Dakota responded, her shoulders shrugging slightly. "I wanna learn more about her and not just through history books."

"Or perhaps because you're sick of being lied to." Klaus wondered.

"That, too." She simply replied.

Klaus lifted his head a little, his eyes looking down at her as he squinted them, as if he was observing her, trying to catch her in a lie. It's either she's being completely honest, or she's just a really good liar.

"Well, let's get you cleaned up then."

• ─────────────── •

I'm still really busy with school ksksksk. I've only written like five and a half chapters for part two. BUT IM GONNA PUSH THROUGH THIS CHRISTMAS BREAK. Anyway, I hope you guys liked this chapter! <3