Chapter 23: Katerina

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After learning that they had a much worse threat coming their way sometime soon, Rose and Lydia had sat each and every one of them down so they would be able to explain what they knew of the mysterious 'Klaus' and what he would want with Elena Gilbert... and Amalia Schultz, for that matter.

"Okay, you have to understand. I only know what I've picked up on over the years. And I don't know what's true and what's not true. That's the problem with all this vampire crap." Rose warned them that she may not be able to give them as much information as they would like her to, but that she would do their best.

"Except for Klaus. He is most definitely real." Lydia added, taking herself back to her own encounters she had with the man. Which fortunately for Rose, she never had the opportunity to know him personally. At least not in the way that Lydia did.

"Who is he?" Amalia asked. Though she had heard his name tossed around in one or two conversations, no one had ever gone into great detail as to who he truly was.

"One of the originals. He's a legend." Damon answered with just about the only knowledge of Klaus he contained.

"From the first generation of vampires." Stefan added a fact he had come across after hearing the name for the first time days before.

"Like Elijah." Elena associated the two vampires with each other, assuming that Klaus would be eerily similar to the man they had met and killed.

"Elijah is the easter bunny compared to Klaus. Klaus is... not someone you want to mess with-- I'll put it that way." Lydia wasn't sure how she would be able to describe Klaus. To her, he was absolutely indescribable. The fear he brought on others, how wicked he was... it wasn't something she could put into so many words.

"Klaus is known to be the oldest." Stefan spat out another fact he knew of the vampire they were going to be up against soon enough.

"Okay, so you're saying that the oldest vampire in the history of time is coming after me?" Elena asked out of fear, yet she seemed completely calm at the same time.

"No." , "Yes." Damon and Rose answered at the same time, their answers contradicting each others.

"What they're saying is-- I mean, if what they're saying is true..." , "Which it is." , "And you're not just saying it so we don't kill you." Damon looked back at Rose, threatening her with his eyes.

"I can vouch. She's not." Lydia popped up once again to promise them that Rose wasn't beating around the bush. She was telling them everything she knew.

"Then we're looking at a solid maybe." Damon had his fingers crossed that the situation at hand wouldn't end up being a reality, but part of him knew that it was. It was the reality.

"Look, I've never even met anyone who's laid eyes on him. I mean, we're talking centuries of truth mixed with fiction. I mean, we don't know what's real. For all we know, he could be just some sort of stupid bedtime story." Stefan sided with Damon, continuing to have hope that Klaus was a made up character used to scare children.

"Well, unless I've been running from my imagination for five hundred years, he's real." Lydia rolled her eyes at how ignorant all of them were.

"Lydia, you shouldn't even be here. Klaus will come after you. He promised." Rose looked over at the woman, warning her of something she already knew.

"What are you talking about? Why would he want to kill Lydia?" Amalia was left in the dark once again, confused as to why Klaus would have any intentions of hurting her ancestor.

"You want to tell her or should I?" Rose looked over at Lydia once again, pressuring her to squeal.

"Tell her what?" Stefan asked, worried for not only Lydia, but for Amalia as well.

"I upset him..." Lydia beat around the bush about it, making it seem more innocent than it actually was. "And now I've been running for 500 years. Simple, really. Nothing too important."

"It's important enough for him to want to kill you. What am I missing?" Amalia looked between Rose and Lydia as she waited for one of them to explain.

"We don't need to get into this right now." Lydia shook her head, refusing to talk about it.

"She deserves to know what she's in for." Rose defended Amalia for once. And Amalia had to admit that it was nice to have someone around that wasn't willing to keep secrets from her constantly.

"Who?" Amalia questioned once again, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to know the answer.

"You."

✰✰✰

Elena had left for school, leaving the rest of the group to continue their discussion on the oldest vampire who went by the name of Klaus. It had started off as why Klaus had been after Lydia for centuries, though all the information they had shared so far was that Lydia had taken his first love away from him.

"I don't get it. Why did you did kill her?" Amalia asked out of confusion, wondering why Lydia had murdered the girl centuries ago.

"To protect her." Lydia answered, but it was obvious that it was something she had wanted to have kept to herself.

"Excuse me while I try to piece together why the hell you would protect the bride of Dracula." Amalia pressed for more detailed answers. She had been left in the dark for far too long and she was determined to end the secrets at last.

Lydia sighed, throwing her head down to the floor as she wondered what the outcome of her words would be. "I— She was my sister... she wanted to turn for him. And because he loved her, he easily would have let her. So, I told herI would help her. I gave her the blood of a witch, watched as she planned her own death, and then had a witch I was close to perform a spell that would resurrect her when the time was right."

"Let's just say, you remind me of someone." Lydia wasn't clear on who it was that she reminded her of, but she knew her choice of words would make it easier for Amalia to trust her.

"Oh, my god." Amalia's eyes widened as she recalled every memory of the vague things Lydia had said to her in the past.

"Why are you so hell bent on protecting me?" Amalia screamed at Lydia out of frustration. All she wanted was to escape her obsessive ancestor , but she made it harder and harder by the day.

"If I tell you, you'll look." Lydia screamed back at her, refusing to go into more detail as always.

"No." Amalia shook her head in disbelief, trying her best to avoid coming to terms with what she was being told.

"And we have Amalia. We have everything they've ever wanted." Rose assured Trevor that they would both come out of their deal with Elijah without him harming so much as a simple hair on their heads.

"Amalia--" Lydia could sense the horror that practically shooting off Amalia's body, bringing a pit to her stomach from guilt.

"Amalia Grace?" Elijah was able to muster up Amalia's name from only a glance in her direction, sending a shiver down her spine out of fear.

"No. This isn't happening. No. No, no, no, no, no." Amalia was shocked, to say the least. For the two months she had known her, Lydia allowed her to believe that she was one of her ancestors. She lied to her more than once. She withheld probably the most important information Amalia had ever learned about herself. And all Amalia could do was sit there as her entire world exploded right before her eyes. "And this entire time you pretended like you just wanted to get to know me?"

"Lia, I'm so—" Lydia watched as Amalia stood up from the couch and began to walk away from the group, so she followed her, completely aware that the girl had no interested in being followed.

"Sorry?" It was hard for her to believe that someone who had allowed her to die in the former life she had no knowledge of up until that moment could also be the same person that had promised all she wanted to do was protect her on multiple occasions. "Is that what you do for people you love? Murder them in cold blood?"

"There's more that you don't know." Lydia screamed, but by the time she had let it out, Amalia had already sprinted up the stairs and as far away from her as possible.

✰✰✰

Stefan Salvatore walked into his bedroom to find Amalia Schultz laying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling as she tried to process everything she had just found about herself and her new sister.

He walked over to the bed, laying down beside her and just looking at her. "You okay?"

She shook her head before sitting her body up, allowing her to lean on the headboard of his bed. "Not really."

"Need a friend?" He asked her, though he already knew the answer. But he wanted to make sure she was okay with being around him instead of being alone.

"Kinda." It was hard for her to admit that she needed him. Typically, she would have cracked a joke about how unfortunate the situation was for her, but this time she wasn't able to. "I feel like I just got punched in the face."

"In a way, you did." Stefan agreed with her. The news she had just received was so sudden and all at once. It was like being emotionally punched in the face.

"Since when are you metaphorical?" She looked over at him with her eyebrows furrowed. For their entire friendship, she had heard every wise word he had to say, but never once had she heard him use any sort of metaphor.

"I'm full of surprises." He smiled at her lightly. Well, as much of a smile as one would expect from Stefan Salvatore. And as much as she fought it, she couldn't help but burst out in laughter at the idea of him being, quote on quote, full of surprises.

She stared at him a bit longer than she should have. Even when he wasn't even looking at her anymore. For a moment, she saw him in a different light. She didn't see him as Elena Gilbert's boyfriend. She didn't see him as her good friend. She saw him as Stefan.

She sat there for a second, returning her eyes back onto her lap. Her hazel eyes stared down at her hands, watching as they nervously played with each other. "What am I supposed to do, Stefan? My entire life has been a lie."

"No, it hasn't." He agreed with her, but he assumed it would be better off if he just kept that to himself and tried to get her back on the track of positivity lane.

"Yes, it has. My sister, who I didn't even know was my sister, is the only reason I'm even living in this century right now. And she only came to town to protect me from my lunatic ex-boyfriend, who apparently has been in love with me for a millennial and wants to kill my best friend. You know, everything I've ever believed... every time anyone ever told me I looked like my mom... it's been a lie this entire time. All of it." A tear slipped out of Amalia's eye at the mention of her mother.

For her entire life, people had come up to her and her mother and told them just how similar they looked to one another. Even after her mother died, her father never let a day go by without telling her how much she looked like Alessandra Schultz. And within seconds, one of the few things she felt she had left of her mother had been ripped from her completely.

He rested his hand on her leg, feeling like there was nothing else he could possibly do to comfort her... to take away her pain. He looked over at her, watching as the mascara smeared from underneath her bottom lids. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer to him and allowing her to cry into his shoulder.

✰✰✰

After coming to the conclusion that she wasn't able to handle any more news or even having to hear about the situation that was at hand for her entire group of friends, Amalia had decided to skip out on school to think everything over. And seeing as it was more than enough to process, not a single second went by that she thought of anything else.

She felt lied to. Everything she had ever believed about herself or anyone else, for that matter, was completely and utterly fabricated.

"What do you want, Lydia?" Amalia asked as soon as she looked up at the door and saw that her apparent sister was walking through, making her way over to the bed and sitting in front of her.

Lydia paused for a second, welcoming the silent filled room. She wasn't sure what to say or if Amalia would even allow her to say it, but what she did know is that she no longer had the right to keep secrets from the girl. "You need to look at your sketches."

"How did you know I--" Amalia was baffled that Lydia, of all people, knew of the hobby she had kept to herself for all of her life. It was Amalia's safe place. She hadn't told a soul in the world about her art and now that someone else knew of it, it was beginning to feel less sacred to her.

"I know you more than you think I do." Lydia looked beaten down... tired of all of the lying, tired from every ounce of truth that was revealed that day. But most importantly, she looked sad. Not only because she was scared of the return of Klaus, but because she felt she was losing her sister. "I looked at them when I first got to town. Trust me when I say this, it will explain everything."

"I have no reason to trust you." Amalia crossed her arms over her chest defensively. For a second, she wondered to herself if she was trying to protect herself from Lydia or what it was that Lydia was trying to tell her.

"I have no reason to lie to you." Lydia watched as Amalia pulled out her sketchbook from under her bed, flipping to the last page that had a drawing inside of it. "What is it?"

"A wolf." Amalia ran her hands over the page, observing every square inch of the creature she had drawn. "I drew this on the night of the pageant. I don't-- I don't understand."

"I didn't let you die just because I was protecting you." Lydia revealed, leading up to the news of something that would crush all of Amalia's hopes of avoiding the situation. "You wanted to turn because you loved him. And because he loved you, he was going to let you. But what he didn't know was what would happen if you did."

"What are you talking about?" Amalia was eager to find out what it was that was important enough for Lydia to allow her to die with the intentions of her reincarnating centuries later.

"You drew a wolf because your subconscious knew Tyler was a wolf. But you didn't." Lydia revealed, which only confused the girl further. "You predict things through your art without realizing it. Klaus wanted you because he loved you. But he needed you because you were an advantage. But in death, that gift goes with it."

"So you're saying I'm psychic." Amalia closed her sketchbook and began to laugh, denying the truth of what she was hearing.

"I'm saying your artwork is prophetic."

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I'm sick at that moment, therefore I have plenty of time to update. I know this chapter was only four scenes, but that's really all I needed to incorporate into this chapter. I hope you guys find Amalia's story interesting because we're going to go into more detail with all of it throughout the season(s) and whatnot.

x