Instead of sleeping on the bed, I grabbed the blankets and sat by the wall. I leaned my head against the other wall, kept my eyes on the door and silently pleaded to be let out. The walls seemed to close around me with every small movement I made, which made me pull the blankets up to my neck and grip them tightly. Whenever I heard a movement come from outside my room, my eyes would snap oven and I began to worry. Nora or Mary Louise could come at any moment, inject me with vervain or use their magic on me. 

   They couldn't touch me, but I knew they had other forms of torture.

   Against the wall, I read Stefan's journal. There were many books lying around, but it felt like I needed to read his journal. I wanted to know more about that day, and the time he spent with Valerie. The entries after July 15 were full of her, of the moments they shared and the small bits of conversation. From what I could get, he was immediately captivated by her. 

   The words on the page made me frown.

   A cell phone began to buzz. I jumped from the sudden sound, but quickly glanced around the room to see where it could be. Mine had disappeared before I woke up in the cellar. I crawled towards the bed finding the phone under it. The number calling was from Mystic Falls, which made me both confused and excited at the same time.

   I answered it. "Hello?"

   "Clara?"

   A breath of relief left my lips. "Stefan..."

   "How are you on my phone right now?"

   "You must have dropped it," I said. "In my room. Maybe when you were looking for a jacket?"

   He hummed. "How are you? Are you okay?"

   I sighed and moved back towards the wall, leaning against it and keeping my eyes on the doorway. "I'm spelled in my room by a group of mean girls. Other than that, I'm..." I didn't know what I was, or how I felt. For one, I felt trapped. The walls closed in on me whenever I moved a bit. Secondly, I felt paranoid. Any small movement made me jerk awake and pay attention, and hoped it wasn't any of the Heretics.

   Stefan sighed. "I know. I'm still trying to figure out a way to get into the house."

   "I'll be fine." I hoped he believed those words more than I did. "Don't worry about me. Just worry about Damon not killing anymore Heretics. I figured he must have been the one to kill this Malcolm."

   "He was." He took a deep breath and cracked one of his knuckles. "I'll keep Damon away from any more Heretics... Lily is keeping you because she wants us to turn against each other. I'll convince her that I hate his guts and she'll have made her point."

   I nodded and glanced down at the journal. If I said I wasn't curious, I was lying. I wanted to know who Valerie was to him, what she had meant to him, who she will mean to him. At the same time, I didn't want to know. But I was too curious and let that get the best of me.

   "Who's Valerie Tulle?" I finally asked. "You wrote about her in your journal from 1863, which you burned. She must have found a copy of it back in the prison world."

   He was silent for several moments. "Are you talking about one of the Heretics?"

   "Yeah," I nodded. "Dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, and really tall? She's one of my new psychotic housemates..." 

   A flash of blond hair appeared beside me. Valerie knelt there, glaring at me. She reached for the hand that I held the phone with and squeezed, until both my bones and the phone were broken. I yelped and dropped the phone to the ground, then brought my hand to my chest so no more harm would be done to me. I glared back at her as I moaned at the pain. Her hand was also affected by her own spell, healing slowly now that she pulled away. 

   "Dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, tall, psycho." She sneered at me, her hands closing into fists to her side. "Summarised me to a tee!" She waved her hand and muttered something—causing my neck to break.

   Since I was full of vervain, it took me longer to wake up. I groaned and rubbed my neck, blinking several times to accustom myself to the bit of sunlight that drifted in through the window. There was a shadow of a person in the sunlight. I turned my head to see Valerie, sitting on the piano stool with Stefan's journal in her hands. 

   "How do you have this?" she asked, turning it to show the front. 

   I stared at the journal then looked at her. "Nora gave it to me," I said as I stood and grabbed the blanket. I didn't want her to see me weak, freaked because I was spelled into this room. She didn't need to know. I set the bed and turned to her, crossing my arms in front of me. "What happened between you and Stefan?"

   "Wouldn't you like to know." There was a faint smile on her lips.

   I was tired of all of the girls in the house being harsh just because they had magic. Even though I was a mere vampire, I knew I could be as harsh as them. If not, harsher. But, there was no need for that. I was curious. I wanted to know.

   I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. "No, yeah, you're right," I nodded. "I'm already in enough pain. The last thing I need to know about is some girl who batted her eyelashes at Stefan 149 years ago."

   "Some girl?" Valerie smiled wider. She crossed her legs and stared at me, the smile becoming wider. "I wasn't just girl to him. I was the first love of Stefan's life."

   I hummed and nodded. "Really? Because I read that journal. He seems to mention this Clara Forbes a lot."

   Her smile disappeared, but it came back soon. "Think what you like, but I know..." She sighed and looked down at the journal. "I was at the fair that day because Lily sent us to check on him. So I did."

   "Us?"

   "Myself and Julian." She said his name with a hint of disgust, and her eyes showed hatred. "He saw me, reminded me why I was there in the first place. I told him I had it all under control—I was lying. I wasn't prepared for how taken I was with him." She looked at me, a smile full of memories on her face. "He was gorgeous and sweet..."

   "I know," I muttered as I looked down at my hands. 

   Although I could imagine the Stefan in present time, there were those moments where I was just reminded of him back in those days. His hair was longer, a curl on his forehead. His smiles were wide and genuine, the simplicity of being human in every aspect that he did. Just a boy, back then. We were young then, just children with a full life ahead of us. It was the Stefan I had wanted to fall for, the boy with the curled hair and the wide eyes and the playful eyes. 

   I cleared my throat and looked back at Valerie, hoping she didn't hear me. "That was when you compelled him to write all those nice things about you, right? I've heard this story before: sweet, little orphan girl named Katherine Pierce waltzed into his life by accident and then turned out to be a manipulative little bitch."

   Valerie rolled her eyes. "I suppose that would have been easier, had I actually had the ability to compel people. I was just a witch, rejected from her coven for being an abomination of nature because I had no power of my own. The only magic I had was contained in an amulet, to be siphoned in times of need."

   The thing was, that I believed her and the journal. Stefan fell, and still does, easily for people. He was a hopeless romantic, loved romantic books and poetry, said those kind words to girls to see them blush and cover their mouths with their handkerchiefs. I found that part of him appealing, the way he allowed himself to fall so easily for others because he wanted to. Maybe, it was why I had fallen for him as well for a while.

   Valerie continued with their story, how he told her about his life. He spoke of Damon at war, about Clara—me—and how he loved her but she loved his brother, about his father judging him for not joining the war, and a mother who died when he was ten. But, between all those lovely moments together, she kept mentioning Julian. Whenever his name left her mouth, hatred would appear in her eyes. But, when she said Stefan's name, her eyes lit up. I wondered if she still felt the same as she did for him.

   "So, we went into the woods..." She trailed off with a ghost of a smirk.

   "And then..." I leaned my head forward a bit, I wanted to know what happened next. 

   She looked over at me with the same ghost of a smirk. "None of your business."

   I sat at the edge of the bed and leaned back, crossing my legs. "I think now I know why you put that burning spell on me. It wasn't meant for Mary Louise or Nora, but for Stefan."

   She chuckled and leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. "Well, since you're so curious... Please, allow me to continue."

   She mentioned the woods, the lanterns hung on the trees, and how Stefan looked under the light. I knew very well of what she said, because I had experienced those same feelings. I had seen the light of fire on Stefan's face, had walked through the woods with him in my arms, had moments where we almost kissed. But, as I imagined her story, about her and Stefan, I remembered Damon and I. 

   I remembered being in the woods, the lanterns on the trees, how he smiled down at me as he gently pushed me back against a tree. And the way he smiled, how it made my heart almost leap from my chest. His hand dragged from my neck to my waist as he kissed me, as he smiled against the kiss, as he laughed and whispered an I love you. I remembered how his day suit felt beneath my fingers, how I dragged my hand up his chest to his neck and pulled him down to me to whisper a confession in return.

   What scared me was that the memory made my chest ache. Memories of Damon should no longer have this effect on me.

   I swallowed and looked over at Valerie. She spoke of what happened that night, not in detail but it was obvious with the way she smiled.

   "It was his first time," she smiled, tilting her head to the side. "I'm sure you've been someone's first, so you know what it's like to have a completely unforgettable place in someone else's mind."

   Damon.

   I cleared my throat and bit the corner of my lips, nodding. "Of course..." I didn't know if it was because of her words or because of the name that popped into my head. 

   Valerie chuckled. "That's what I thought." She let out a sigh and leaned back, leaning against the piano. "He showed me his mother's grave, told me that he felt that he couldn't get the medicine to her on time."

   "Cream violets," I said out loud. I had consoled him after his mother's funeral, I knew very well how he felt about her death. He always felt as if it were his fault, because he was never able to get the flowers in time.

   Valerie nodded. "I consoled him, told him how cream violets don't have medicinal properties—an old wives' tale. You see, I worked in a sanatorium, caring for patients just like his mother—which is how I met her. But, I knew, and I consoled him. I told him that her death wasn't his fault." Her face hardened. "Julian came, then. He made me leave Stefan behind; I promised him that I would find my way back to him."

   "You're 149 years late in that promise," I said, my voice a combination of hatred and sarcasm. There was a part of me that felt jealous over Valerie and him, but other than that I also felt sadness. The sadness was greater than the jealousy, and that bothered me. "In other words, it was sort of like The Notebook, except you two never reconnect and he forgets about you."

   "Julian was in a hurry to get back to Europe," she continued, the same hatred in her voice. "He convinced me to lie to Lily, to tell her that Stefan was happy. Believe me, Julian had a way of convincing anyone to do anything."

   The way she said that was strange, a different meaning. I pushed myself to lean forward and stared at her, my eyes widening. "Valerie, did he—"

   "—I sent a telegram to him a few months later," she interrupted. Finally, I would be making my way back to him. I told him I wanted to run away with him, and to meet me Friday at noon." There was a hint of a smile on her lips, but it was because of Stefan. "He waited and waited for me. With every passing footstep, he would turn, expecting to see me."

   I knew that day. He had waited in a bench with flowers, a solemn look in his eyes as he turned at every passing person. I had been in town with my sisters, looking at cloth for new dresses we were to make for a party. When I found him sitting there, I had taken a seat next to him and joked about him waiting for me. He laughed, but the laugh had been forced. I had asked him what was wrong, and he told me that he was preparing himself to visit his mother's grave. I left, afterwards, after kissing him in the cheek and telling him that she would be proud of him. Never did I imagine that he would be waiting for a girl, waiting for Valerie. 

   Stefan had sat in that bench the whole day, past sundown and after nightfall. It was my father who had gotten him to leave, something about vandals and runaway soldiers in the area. 

   "Eventually," sighed Valerie, "he accepted he'd been abandoned all over again, and then he walked home under the cold and distant stars." She closed the journal and threw it on the bed, right beside me.

   "How could you do that to him?" I found myself asking. It surprised me. There was a rather large part of me that wondered about them, what would have happened if she had gone to him and they ran away together. He had almost done the same with me when I was fifteen, but he talked me out of it as we made our way to the train station. So, I knew how easily he would have left for this girl he fell for.

   Valerie was close to tears, her lips slightly shaking. Her hand moved from her side to her stomach and immediately fell afterwards. "There was a change of plan." There was sadness in her eyes, a distant memory that made her feel pain. She fixed her posture and turned to walk out. "I'm done talking to you about this."

   "I know!" I suddenly said. 

   She stopped and slowly turned towards me, her brow arched. "What?"

   "Well, I don't really know..." I sighed and stood. "I mean, I came to know too late, but it still hurt." I knew the pain in her eyes, had mirrored it when I found out. 

   "What are you talking about?"

   I looked up at her. "You were pregnant with his child," I said, the words bittersweet, "and Julian did something that made you..." I couldn't find myself to finish the words. My hand reached for my stomach, clutching at my shirt. 

   Valerie tilted her head to the side as she looked at me. "Were you..."

   I licked my lips and nodded, frowning. "I didn't know I was when I died, though." It felt strange to speak of this to someone I didn't know, because I had never really voiced it to anyone other than Damon. Even he didn't know how I truly felt about the situation. A small, emotionless laugh escaped my lips. "I know I shouldn't act as if I know what it feels like, because I didn't know until recently. You knew, you wanted it, and it was taken from you by a terrible man."

   Valerie stared at me with curiosity, her brows furrows and her arms crossed in front of her. She looked at me as if I were something she was trying to decipher, whether I was playing with her or actually saying the truth.

   "What's your name?" she finally asked. "If you're going to be stuck in here for a while, I might as well learn it."

   I swallowed hard. "I'm..." I took a deep breath and hoped she wouldn't dislike me after the whole heart-to-heart talk. "I'm Clara. Clara Forbes."

   Her eyes widened. "You're Clara Forbes?" she questioned. There wasn't anger in her eyes, but pure surprise. She huffed and turned around, walking out of the room without another word. I heard her footsteps stomping down the stairs, then the front door slam closed. 

   I sighed and grabbed the journal from the bed, feeling the frayed edges of the leather. I had seen Stefan write in this very journal time and time again. He was secretive of his writing, never wanted anyone to know what or who it was about. When I made fun of him about it, he'd laugh and say that maybe in the future I would be allowed to read his journal. He had been bluffing, of course, a joke to him. Never would he let anyone deliberately read it. 

   I sat against the wall and began to read at the beginning of his journal. It was breaking his privacy, but I wanted to know more, curious of all the things he had written about in my presence and in the loneliness of his bedroom. 

   The entries were different yet familiar. There were so many things we'd done together that I thought of the Clara in his journal as a different person, some character in a book. The me he had written about was someone strange, familiar in a sense, almost like I was not that her. He spoke about his mother a lot, how he missed her and how he dreaded that she had died. He wrote about Damon, about the brother he considered a best friend and a teacher. He wrote about his father, a man that he loved but also hated. He wrote about friends and the people of the town, of animals he had seen and small things that had happened to him.

   This was the Stefan that had been my best friend, the boy who'd accompanied me from town to my house and vice versa.

   The sound of heels clicking against the floor made me look up from the journal. Lily stood in front of me, an emotionless look on her face. 

   "Is Valerie here?" she asked.

   "She left," I said, looking back down at the journal. "I heard her leave the house."

    Lily stood there for a couple of moments, then took a step forward. "I knew your mother," she said. "She had been a friend of mine since we were children, but we grew apart after we both married."

   I hummed and nodded, not bothering to look up. "That's nice."

  "How did you feel like when you transitioned and were told you could never see her again?" she asked.

   I looked up at her with an arched brow. A small huff escaped my lips as I shook my head in disbelief. "You must have had a mother. I mean, even Hitler had a mother."

   "Of course I had a mother," she nodded.

   "Then you know that love is different than any other kind of love," I said. "In other words, I felt as if she had died instead of me." I frowned at the memories that passed through my head. 

   They were of my mother, and how she cared for me. She would sing as she knitted, hum some old tune that was sung by her grandmother. She would brush my hair at night, then tuck me into bed and hum that tune again. 

   I stood and walked over to her, the journal tight in my hands. "Stefan wrote about you all the time. You can read it for yourself." I pushed the journal towards her. The question she had asked me wasn't about the pain I had felt for my mother, but because she wanted to know about how Stefan dealt with it. I knew little of how he did, because of I had been there. The rest, the deeper tales and emotions, we written in the journal.

   Lily looked at me with wide eyes. She glanced down at the journal and slowly reached for it. Her eyes moved down to the entry, swiftly reading either all of it or part of it.

   "He loved you," I told her. "He missed you. And if this journal or how he feels about you doesn't say that enough, then I don't know what."

   Lily stared at the entry, at the words. Her eyes were teary, a small smile playing at her lips. I wondered if she knew how much both Stefan and Damon had missed her, had mourned her when they thought she died. I wondered if she knew that the son she disliked, that rebellious boy who did—and still does—whatever he liked planned to name our first girl after her. 

   "Nora!" She turned towards the door. "Remove the barrier spell, please." She looked over at me, a tiny smile at her lips. "As of this moment, Miss Forbes is no longer a prisoner."

   I took a step back. "Is this another trick?" I asked, staring at her with wide eyes.

   The smile on her lips widened a bit. "No, it's a reward for Stefan's honesty. Go, before I change my mind."

   I moved towards the door and waved a hand through it, smiling to myself when my hand went through. I was prepared to take a step through, but turned towards Lily. She was still facing the other way, staring down at the journal.

   "Thank you," I said. "I don't know what changed your mind, but thank you." Before she said anything, I sped out of the house.

   The sun was setting, the air gentle and warm. I was away from the house, in the middle of the street, and I was out of breath. I didn't know the exact amount of vervain I had been injected with, just that it was too much. Instead of using my speed, I had to walk. The hunger made it worse. I wanted to sink my teeth into anything, whatever I could find crawling around here. There were no humans, except those that wandered into the town looking for some scare or to see if rumours of supernatural beings were true. And even though I was terrified of bleeding one dry, I wanted nothing more than a human to appear out of nowhere. 

   I had walked past nightfall. The crickets chirped all around me, the only sign of life in the whole town. All of the lights were cut off, leaving the centre of town dark. The only light I had were the moon and stars, which made the place appear more eerie. No wonder college kids came for their scare tactics, the place appeared like a haunted house.

   I leaned against one of the buildings and tried to regain my breath, to control the hunger. It had been a few days without blood, just vervain. I wasn't just hungry, but ravenous. My hands shook, my knees wobbled, and I knew that I would succumb to the tiredness at any moment. 

   "Clara?"

   I blinked and turned my head. "Damon..."

   He appeared next to me, a hand on my arm as if to steady me. "How did you..." He trailed off as he continued to stare at me. There was a look in his eyes, half of guilt and the other one I couldn't read. "Are you okay?"

   "Well, I was pumped with vervain for a few days, so not really." I forced a smile over at him and pushed myself from the building, grabbing his hand for more support.

   He pulled away from my touch. "What the hell?"

   I groaned. "The spell," I recalled. "One of the Heretics put a spell on me, so that no one else would be able to touch me." I rubbed my temples in annoyance and sighed, shaking my head. "Sorry..." 

   Damon shook his head and laid his hands on his waist. "Okay, no touching. Got it. How about going ho—to that apartment you owned by Whitmore?" He took steps back, towards the familiar blue car. "I have been staying there, so it may be a bit messy."

   "What?" I got in the passenger's seat and leaned my head back on the seat, staring at him. "Why?"

   "Let's say that I may have promised Mother dearest that I wouldn't step foot inside Mystic Falls." He looked over at me, the sarcasm on his face fading. There was comfort there, in the small and relaxed look he had. "At least it kept you safe..."

   Damon had been right about staying in my apartment. It wasn't as messy as I thought it would be, but it was obvious that he had been living there the days I was in the boarding house. There were a few blood bags around, bottles of alcohol, an unmade bed, and the pillows from the sofa were on the floor. I took no mind of it and drank two blood bags, almost inhaled them as if they were air. 

   After I took a shower, I stood over the bed. I kept seeing the bed back at the boarding house, which made me see the cellar. It reminded me of the vervain injected in me, or Mary Louise stabbing me with the eyeliner and the scissors. I swallowed hard and grabbed a pillow. 

   "You know, I'll take the sofa."

   Damon looked at me with a raised brow. "What?" He followed me out the room. "Clara, go back to the bedroom."

   "I'll be fine."

   "Clara."

   "I'll be fine!"

   "Go back to the bedroom." He grabbed me and pulled me towards the bedroom, even though my skin burned his hand. Once he let go, he hid his hand behind him and stared sternly at me. "Sleep in the bed, okay? I'll take the sofa."

   I watched as he grabbed a pillow and a blanket, and made his way towards the small living room. My hands shook as I watched him, and I could feel the pricks from the needs in my arms and neck. The bed was a reminder of pain, of vervain and needles and scissors.

   "Damon!" I called to him.

   He peeked in through the doorway. "What?"

   "Sleep in the bed with me." I almost added a please at the end, but I didn't want to seem desperate. But, I was. I was desperate for a small comfort of home. "Please."

   He stared at me for a few seconds, then nodded. He walked in, threw the pillow back where it was, and laid down. I moved to the other side, laid down, and turned towards him. He was already looking at me, an arm behind his head. At that moment, I remembered the nights we would lay like this in the woods. He would have this smile on him, as if he had just one something magnificent.

  I wondered if I could ever see that smile again.