┏━━━━⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪━━━━┓

A BLONDE AND A BRUNETTE

"CAN YOU PLEASE STOP STARING AT ME?"

The blonde vampire in the room had the nerve to narrow her eyes in retaliation to the brunette's meek question. "No, I will not."

After Klaus had essentially killed her very best friend and sent the others spiralling for a solution to his ongoing dilemma, Charlotte was banished from the gymnasium. Perhaps it was the tears in her eyes or the tremors of her body that made him send her along with the other Original vampire amongst them, but she found she couldn't care less.

All she could focus on was the way the blonde girl was staring at her as she deposited Tyler's limp body next to Caroline's equally as limp one. And yeah, her stomach threatened to spill its contents all over the linoleum floor at the sight.

Rebekah Mikaelson was just like her brother, if not worse, in Charlotte's opinion. Physical appearances aside, they held the same sort of mischief in her eyes that couldn't be copied in the eyes of literally anyone else. She screamed trouble, trouble in a way where it was obvious she was used to getting what she wanted.

And the staring was seriously starting to piss Charlotte off, even as she sat herself right beside Tyler, her hand latched around his wrist like a magnet. "Give it a rest," she fumed, her frustrations bubbling to the surface. "I have a familiar face, I know!"

Rebekah's head tilted to the side, observing. "Familiar, yes, but that snappy attitude of yours certainly isn't."

It was starting to get ridiculous, now. "You knew Lottie too?"

She gave Charlotte a pointed look, like she was scolding a child for not knowing the obvious. "Everyone knew Lottie back then," she shrugged, eyes flickering around the corridor they were situated in, like she was bored. "Who knew so many doppelgängers would be in little old Mystic Falls?"

Charlotte frowned. "I'm not her doppelgänger."

Rebekah's eye twitched. "What do you mean you're not?" she questioned, only for the other girl to remain tight-lipped. Suddenly, though, she appeared right in front of the girl. Charlotte startled, but the blonde held her gaze. "Tell me."

"I have her memories, one of her meeting Nik," she confessed, like her lips were moving a mile a minute without her brain having the time to logically catch up. "I went to Chicago, met a relative, she threw the word Reincarnation around."

Charlotte blinked from her stupor, only to find Rebekah sitting there with her lips parted ever so subtly. "Anything else?"

"I'm adopted, and I know nothing about where I come from," she blurted out, only to sink back down to reality and realize what she'd told the blonde. "How did you—"

"Isn't that fascinating." Rebekah looked entirely too pleased as she went to sit back down across the hall. It was the Henry girl's turn to watch her, to watch as she picked up the phone that she'd set down before, and scrolled through it.

Charlotte recognized it immediately. "That's Elena's," she said, an edge of protectiveness to her tone despite the fact that she felt totally useless, bracketed between her two very much unconscious friends. "And what the hell did you do to Caroline?"

"I know it is," Rebekah deadpanned, looking right at the girl. She waved it around in her grasp before her gaze settled back onto the device. "And let me guess, a blonde best friend?"

Charlotte's eyebrows furrowed, confused as to why she'd posed the question like that— like she already knew what the answer was. Her eyes suddenly widened as she looked at the blonde. "No. No way."

Rebekah's gaze didn't lift, but a soft sort of smirk appeared on her face. "Yes way," she mimicked, trying to stifle a laugh. "It's almost funny how— wait, what?"

Charlotte was too nosey for her own good. "What?" she inquired, noting the rage that morphed onto the Original's face.

"That bitch has my necklace!" she growled out with her own heavy dose of frustration. She rose quickly, phone almost crushed in her grip. Just before she went to leave, she pointed at Charlotte. "Stay!"

And though Charlotte wanted nothing more than to get out, and hell, maybe even drag Tyler and Caroline out of there with her, she nodded with bile rising in her throat.

But it was strange, because the first thing she heard when Rebekah's heeled shoes darted down the hall was Caroline waking up with groans of discomfort. She waited with bated breath, watching the girl rejoin the land of the living.

Ish. 

"Charlie?" she asked, voice groggy like she was waking from a nap. Though, judging from the way she was holding her neck, it certainly wasn't anything close to a nap. "What's going on?"

Charlotte glanced at her friend, teeth letting go of the inside of her cheek.

"We're so screwed, Care."

⋆౨ৎ˚

After disappearing and reappearing, Rebekah hauled the three of them to the science lab. She made Caroline drag the Lockwood boy's body along, taking her own stance at the rear as Charlotte led them to the classroom.

Neither Charlotte and Caroline spoke as the other blonde mindlessly scrolled away on Elena's phone, not that they had to. They were silently communicating as they stood on each side of Tyler, his figure lying across one of the lab benches that took up space in the room.

They were both sick with worry, because although they knew he was going to wake up, they also knew there was a possibility that he wouldn't make it anyway. Not if Bonnie couldn't find a solution, not when time was bound to run out.

In a flash, the boy's chest jolted upright with a frantic breath. His breaths were laboured, panicked, and while Caroline tried to soothe him, Charlotte's fingers immediately sought out his neck.

There was no pulse, not that she'd expected one; but she still couldn't stop the wobble of her bottom lip.

"Where am I? What happened?" he was immediately asking, gaze haphazardly switching between the girls' looming figures.

Caroline's gaze softened. "Tyler—"

"Don't be shy about it," Rebekah chimed in, like she was taunting them to tell him the truth.

Tyler's eyebrows furrowed, the panic still present in his body language. "What's going on?" he asked once more, before his eyes landed on an ever so quiet Charlotte. "Charlie? What's—"

Instead of looking at him, the Henry girl looked to Caroline with a pleading look in her eyes. "Please don't make me say it," she practically whimpered, her head shaking in denial on its own.

Caroline swallowed. "Klaus is turning you into a vampire. A hybrid— you're in transition," she explained, and Charlotte couldn't stand to see the fear in her best friend's eyes as he pushed himself to sit upright.

"Don't leave out the hard part, sweets," Rebekah reminded the Forbes girl, before she was supplying, "you'll only survive if your witch is successful. If not, you're pretty much dead."

Caroline was immediately consoling him. "You're gonna be okay. It's gonna be fine, alright?"

It was obvious he didn't believe her, and once she'd shoved her tears into her back pocket for later, Charlotte reached out and held his head in his hands. "You are not dying," she said, the statement practically sounding like a demand. "Bonnie's a genius, yeah? You're gonna be fine, Ty."

"Guys, I—"

"Don't," Charlotte stressed, acutely aware of the way a certain Original was staring holes into the side of her head. "Everything's gonna work out. I promise."

In reality, Charlotte Henry didn't believe a word she said. Though she hoped it would be the case, hoped that Tyler could make it out of this as alive as supernaturally possible, she knew something was going to go wrong. He would ever turn into a hybrid, or he would die; and those really sounded like two losing options to the only human of the group.

Footsteps were steadily approaching, and Charlotte all but shrunk back when she spotted the other Original enter the room calmly. "The verdict's in: the doppelgänger should be dead."

"Does that mean we can kill her?" was Rebekah's immediate inquiry, and the brunette amongst them couldn't hold back the aghast grimace on her face, even if she tried.

"No, I'm fairly certain it means the opposite," Klaus responded.

"Call it a hunch." He held a vial in his hand, and in a flash, Rebekah was restraining Caroline in her grip. Charlotte could only stare at him, her hand immediately latching onto her best friend's wrist. "Mind letting me conduct a little experiment, love?"

"Hell no," she grit out, and despite the hard tone she tried to convey, the others in the room could no doubt pick up on her jack rabbiting heart rate.

"Charlotte." His gaze was unwavering. "Step back, sweetheart." Her feet moved on their own accord, just as Klaus approached the Lockwood boy with the vial. "Elena's blood. Drink it."

Caroline's eyes went wide. "No, no Tyler! Don't!"

Charlotte caught the way his eyes rolled. "If he doesn't feed, he'll die anyway."

The Mikaelson man coaxed Tyler into taking the vial, and from her place now just to the side of the two blondes, she watched the way his body shuttered as he reached for it. Then, as he drank from it, he sputtered it up before crashing to the ground. Charlotte tried to surge forward, only for one of Rebekah's arms to stop her from getting any closer.

Watching Tyler scream and wither and thrash on the ground was something worse than watching his neck be snapped in the gym. This was infinitely worse, because it wasn't quick— he was in pain. He was in so much pain that Charlotte could practically feel it. She could practically taste it on her tongue, her stomach churning with anguish of her own.

Eventually, with a loud grunt, Tyler's head snapped up. From her vantage point, the fangs that certainly weren't there before made an appearance, and in that moment, she knew Klaus' cruel little experiment worked.

No, Charlotte would remember this very night for the rest of her life, because her friend who was heaving and snarling and had fangs in addition to his lunar affliction was wholly unrecognizable. To the Henry girl, that might've been the scariest thing of them all.

And Klaus had the gall to look impressed by his own handiwork.

"Well that's a good sign."

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪

[ wyn's note ]

klaus is gonna have to do some next level shit to get charlie in his good graces cause damn. also BEKS AND LOTTIE??? more on that soon teehehehe

thanks for 80K WHAAAAT!! so glad you guys are loving this— thanks for sharing with me with the slow updates (but hopefully one more to come before the weekend)

all my love x