"You really have to stop screaming."

"No, please, stop. Don't..."

"Shh. I got you..."

Lois let out a groan as she regained conciousness. 

What the fuck happened?

Then the memories hit her like a freight train: Vicki, the bathroom, that...

"--Vampire."

Lois spoke so softly, so quietly, it was a wonder that Damon Salvatore even noticed. 

"Ah! Look who's awake."

Lois forced herself to focus, to push past her scrambled thoughts. 

She was cold and the wind whipped around them. 

Where were they?

It was dark, but Lois blinked hard to force her eyes to adjust. 

She could see the silhouette of a man holding onto a woman's arm... Vicki's arm.

They were standing on the edge of a building, the realisation sent adrenaline rushing through Lois' system and she surged forward. 

"No! No, stop! Let go of her!" She pleaded, unaware of another presence joining them on the roof, until a cool breeze drifted again her exposed arms.

The man studied Lois for a moment, then tossed Vicki towards her with a shrug. 

Lois felt relief flood through her system but it was quickly replaced with fear as she was suddenly pulled from the floor. 

Vicki reached out to grab her but the man was too fast, moving Lois onto the ledge of the building's roof in the same way that he had held Vicki before. 

"So brave  to offer yourself to spare her," The man cooed in her ear, tilting her backwards off of the building. 

Lois felt her feet lose contact with the ground, leaving her completely dependent on the man holding onto her. 

"Let her go!" A voice spoke out. 

The man paused, lowering Lois back down enough that the toes of her scuffed trainers could scrape the brickwork. 

She fought hard to control her breathing, trying to focus on Vicki and her grey-black aura. It wasn't an aura colour that Lois saw very often, but she wasn't stupid. She could work out what it meant. 

"Let. Her. Go." The voice repeated, an authoritative air in his tone. 

"Are you sure?" The dark-haired man replied, a curious tone in his voice. "I mean, you forgot to compel this one so I suppose it would solve your little problem... it might be easier if she just fell."

Lois screamed out in terror as she was once again lifted off the ground. Vicki scrambled forward from her place of the ground, reaching out, but the other man grabbed her shoulder. 

"Damon, stop!" 

"Ugh!" The man, Damon, complained. "Relax."

Lois was thrown roughly into Vicki's arms, and for once Lois didn't mind the onslaught of visions and colours and thoughts. 

Her whole body shook as she looked up at the two men who were with them on the roof. 

"What is happening?" Vicki cried, wrapping her arms around Lois like a life line. 

"I don't need her to be dead, but...you might," Damon grabbed the back of Vicki's head from where it was buried in Lois' hair, forcing her to look at him. "What attacked you the other night?"

Vicki gasped in pain, "I don't know! I don't know! An animal?"

"Are you sure about that? Think. Think about it. Think really hard. What attacked you?"

Vicki controlled her breathing, pulling herself free from his grasp as she stared into his eyes, "A vampire."

"Who did this to you?" 

"You did!" Vicki screamed at him. 

"Wrong!"

"Don't." The words were quiet but desperate.

"It was Stefan." Damon emphasised, causing Vicki to look up at him in alarm. 

"Don't." The other man, Stefan, repeated. 

"Come here." Damon said, but it wasn't a request. It was a command.

Damon reached down and pulled Vicki up off the floor, the girl barely resisting him as she stared at Stefan in confusion. 

Lois watched in confusion and horror as Damon placed his hands on both sides of Vicki's head and forced him to look at him. 

"Stefan Salvatore did this to you."  He spoke in such a way that the words seemed truthful, even if they weren't. 

Vicki seemed particularly affected by this as she repeated,"Stefan Salvatore did this to me."

"He's a vampire. A vicious, murderous monster." Damon continued. 

"Please, Damon. Please, don't do this." Stefan pleaded, his eyes flicking between the ground where Lois was crumpled and Vicki who was in Damon's grip.

 "If you couldn't fix it before, I don't know what you can do now."

In one swift motion Damon had pulled Vicki's bandage from her neck, revealing the bleeding wound. Lois instinctively moved her hand to her own bandage. She hadn't looked at the wound, but wondered if it mirrored Vicki's. 

She gasped out in shock as Vicki was thrown back to Lois, both of them collapsing by Stefan's feet. 

"Your choice of lifestyle has made you weak," Damon growled, throwing the bloody bandage at Stefan's face. "A couple of vampire parlour tricks is nothing compared to the power that you could have, that you now need."

Instantly, Stefan's face began to change and Lois fought to maintain the last threads of her sanity. There was no way that the girls were getting out of this alive. 

When they were attacked in the woods, there was only one demon and a party full of people to find them. 

But now there were two bloodsucking monsters and they were on the roof of a building where no-one would think to look.  

"But you can change that. Human blood gives you that."

"No!" Vicki yelled, one hand covering her re-bleeding neck and one hand grabbing Lois. She began to pull the younger girl to her feet and forced them in the direction of the fire escape. 

"You have two choices," Damon continued, as he watched the two girls stumble to their feet. "You can feed and make them forget... Or you can let them run screaming 'vampire' through the town square."

"That's what this is about?" Stefan gasped out and Lois wondered whether he was trying to control himself. "You want to expose me?"

"No!" Damon shouted in annoyance. "I want you to remember who you are!" 

"Why? So I'll feed? So I'll kill? So I'll remember what it's like to be brothers again?" 

That sentence alone had Lois halting any movements, Brothers? Oh, fuck. 

Stefan stood upright and faced Damon head on, "You know what, let them go. Let them tell everyone that vampires have returned to Mystic Falls. Let them chain me up, and let them drive a stake through my heart, because at least I'll be free of you." 

Lois didn't have to be told twice, using the opportunity to continue what Vicki had started. The girls fled to the side of the building, hoping to find the fire escape there or at least put some distance between them and the two psycho brothers on the roof with them. 

"Huh, wow." 

Damon was suddenly stood in front of them, causing the girls to stumble back. 

Damon reached out to grab Vicki, "Come here, sweetheart."

"No!"

"It's okay." Damon soothed, leaning down to whisper something to Vicki's ear. 

Lois watched as Vicki's face fell into a relaxed expression, all signs of struggle leaving her body. 

"What?" Lois whispered, her head reeling with all the thoughts and emotions of the last hour. 

He was in front of her then, speaking to her in a way that felt truthful. But it wasn't true, what he was trying to make her believe, it wasn't the truth. 

His voice was in her head, twisting and tangling through her thoughts.

He was asking her to agree to what he said, to speak it back to him.

Lois shot forward like she'd be electrocuted, "N-No!"

Damon's brow furrowed in confusion, "Hmm. Let's try again."

There was something strange about this girl, Damon had noticed.

He just wasn't aware of how fragmented and broken her mind was. It wasn't behaving how it was supposed to. 

But when he spoke again, Lois felt herself nodding along to his words. 

She didn't believe them, not in the slightest, the lies he was trying to place inside her head refusing to settle because she knew the truth. 

But, something somewhere in the back of her mind was telling her to agree, to play along, to be freed and escape. 

So she did. 

"You okay?" Stefan spoke, pulling Lois' attention away from the blue-eyed monster.

"What happened? Where am I?" Vicki asked, confusion lacing her tone before he felt a sharp pain in her neck. "Oh, shit. I ripped my stitches open."

"We were looking for Jeremy, Vicki," Lois said, repeating the words of her terroriser. 

She was frightened that this monster knew her twin, knew of Jeremy, but it was something she'd have to deal with another time so as to not give up their chance at escape. 

"Lois?" Vicki mumbled, her eyes gazing over to her. "Your brother must've given me some strong pills, I don't remember shit. Let's- Let's go."

"I'll walk you both back to the Grill, Matt was looking for you." Stefan spoke up again, watching both girls with a reserved gaze. 

Both girls nodded numbly, following him.

Back in the Mystic Grill, Lois trailed behind Stefan as he made his way over to a table where Bonnie and Caroline sat. 

"Lois!" Bonnie exclaimed, jumping up from the table. "Where have you been? Elena's be worried sick and Jeremy was freaking out."

Lois mumbled out a soft 'sorry', as Stefan explained that he found her wandering around. 

Lois wanted to tell them that he'd actually been on the roof while his psycho brother threatened to kill her and Vicki, but that was not the best plan so she stayed quiet. 

"Have you guys seen Elena?" Stefan asked. 

"I think she went home to see if Lois was there..." Bonnie trailed off, her concerned eyes watching Lois practically sway on her feet. "I should probably take her home."

Bonnie gathered her belongings and stood from the booth, before stopping to say, "I'm gonna give you Elena's cell number and her email. She is big on texting, and you can tell her I said so."

 "Thank you." Stefan smiled, reaching for the paper. 

However, when his hand touched Bonnie's she zoned out.

Lois watched with interest as Bonnie seemed to come back to the present, whispering, "What happened to you?"

Maybe she wasn't so alone in this...

______

AURA COLOUR CHART

red: energy, strength, anger, lust, passion, ego

orange: self control, ambition, thoughtfulness, courage

yellow: optimistic, happy, intellectual, naive

light green: peaceful, healing, compassion

dark green: deceitful, jealousy, moody

light blue: fear, indecisive, sensitive, skepticism

dark blue: spiritual, loyal, creative, kind

violet: wisdom, intuition, highly spiritual

indigo: benevolence, highly intuitive, seeker

pink: love, sincerity, friendship

grey: depression, sadness, exhaustion, low energy, skepticism

brown: greed, self-involvement, opinionated

black: lacking energy, illness, imminent death

white: perfect balance