2012 — Mystic Falls, Virginia

   He had mourned her. He had mourned her the moment he saw her at the boarding house, wet and bloodied. The moment he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, the shaking of her being a reminder that she was alive in that small period of time between death and eternal damnation.

   It had been nineteen years when he began to mourn her, nineteen years since that girl hadn't left his mind.

   The moment he met her, it was as if this bit of sunshine had appeared between the clouds of his long stormy life. Just a small speck. Like the moment after it rains: the sky is a deep grey, as if it were late afternoon instead of one in the afternoon. The clouds appeared as one singular large cloud, covering the whole sky like a blanket. It's still raining, a light sprinkle, when the clouds begin to separate in that particular spot. Everyone looks at it. They all think that the storm is about to end.

   It was how Stefan Salvatore felt the moment he crossed paths with Florence Gilbert.

   All throughout the short moment he had known her, the storm cleared. The clouds parted, the sun began to shine, and the birds sang their songs of happiness as they flew from tree to tree. The sky became this dazzling blue, something that reminded him of his brothers' eyes when they were children. Dazzling. And it had all been because of her.

   And then he lost her.

   It was a process to loose Florence Gilbert.

   Step One: the moment Stefan saw her in the living room of the boarding house, all soaked, with wet blood coming from wherever in her body—that's where t all began. He had wrapped her in his arms and pulled her to him, afraid to let go. If he did, he knew she would disappear. He wanted the sunshine to stay, to continue to brighten up the eternal storm that was his life.

   Step Two: the moment she said she didn't want to go through with the transition. He had given her the last moments of her life filled with happiness, with smiles, with the sunshine touching her skin just like she had touched his life. He had watched her carefully, slowly, took in every single moment like a breath.

   It had been at that moment that Stefan knew that he had fallen a little bit in love with her.

   Step Three, the last step: leaving her alone. The moment he followed her down the stairs; the moment he kissed her at the front steps of her house and quoted Shakespeare; the moment he got in the car; the moment he stared at her through the window; the moment he drove away. He had regretted those moments ever since they happened, immediately after. They bit at him like mosquitoes, spat at his ears with the rest of the demons that had been born with every wrongdoing he ever did.

   Stefan swallowed hard and looked down to his bed, to the open photo books that had been there for almost two and a half months. They were left in the same position Florence had left them in the moment she dropped them, the faint trace of her scent still on the sheets.

   He moved towards the bookshelves on the wall and pulled out an old edition of Romeo and Juliet: Act 2, Scene 2. Parting is such sweet sorrow, was the quote underlined in red pen. Right besides it, little hearts filled in in the same colour. It was the book she had used back when they were practising for the summer play, her handwriting. Right between the pages, her letter. He had read it a thousand times, memorised each word and dot and crinkle of the page. The edges of the letter was bent, the blue handwriting almost illegible. He had passed his thumb through the letters so many times, traced them as if they were a scar on his wrist.

   He placed the letter back between the pages and moved towards his desk, grabbed the glass of bourbon and downed it as if it were water. The liquid burned the back of his throat, 

   Stefan stared at the girl with autumn in her being between the space of the iron bars of the cell. He stared at her as if she were a ghost, someone he thought he would never see other than in memories and photographs. But, she was there. She sat in front of him, face down, nails chipped, hands bloodied.

   It wasn't the same Florence he had last seen all those years ago.

   The Florence that sat in front of him was a girl that had been plagued by anguish the moment she transitioned from one life to the next. He had seen her past through her memories, had dug through them to see how she turned off her humanity. It began the night he left her alone.

   Florence entered her bedroom and shut the door behind her. The scent of balsam hit her nostrils as she made everything neat. She picked up clothes from the floor, made her dresser clean as possible, and pulled the stuffed bunny rabbit from the top of the bookshelf. She placed it on her dresser, and it hoped it would be John to grab it.

   The door to her bedroom opened.

   Florence turned and stared with wide eyes. "What are you..."

   John Gilbert put his index finger to his mouth as he closed the door behind him. "Why are you cleaning?" he asked, glancing around the room as he stepped closer to her. "It's almost midnight."

   She swallowed hard and began to scratch her arm. "I want to keep everything in order," she muttered. "Dad... Dad kept telling me to clean my room and I..." The words fell short as she tried to finish them.

   Throughout the day, the memories of her father had been distant. She didn't want them close to her, so she pushed them as far as she could. They would creep by, though—a predator hellbent on its prey. The smallest thing would remind her that her father was gone, and it was her fault.

   It was her fault.

   "He was a neat freak," John chuckled, shaking his head, "but he loved you, Flo."

   "He loved what I could do," she said, shaking her head. "He loved that I could make a name for the Gilbert family. As if Grayson wasn't already doing that by being a doctor in this small town."

   "He loved you," John sternly said, smacking her in the arm. "You know how he is; he never wants to show emotion. He thinks it's unmanly to show emotions." He rolled his eyes and made a face, almost sticking his tongue out.

   Florence smiled at that thought of her father. "Do you think Dad is—was—would be proud of me?" Her nose stung, and the back of her throat began to itch. The corner of her eyes began to water, blurring her vision. She looked away and sniffed, cleaning the tears with the back of her hand.

   "You haven't seen his office?" John chuckled and shook his head, pressing his fingers to the temples of his forehead. "Dude, he has every ribbon, every medal, every trophy that you don't have in your room. This guy literally has his whole office full of everything you've done, even that participation trophy from when you were in soccer."

   She had been ten when her parents put her in soccer. She wanted a sport, so she got one. A small team of her classmates for a small community soccer association of Mystic Falls. They wore bright yellow shirts with black shorts, their names and numbers in the back in bold, black letters. They had been called the Mystic Falls Strikers, because they struck goals. It was a cheesy name, but they were ten. To them, it had been the coolest thing ever. Even when they lost more than half of their games, and earned that participation trophy, it was the best thing that could have happened to them.

   Florence smiled and looked down at her hands, the tears freeing themselves. "I miss him."

   John wrapped his arms around his sister and pulled her to him, rubbing her back. "I know," he muttered. He gripped her tighter, his arms pinning her to him. "It's why we can't also lose Grayson."

   "John?" Florence tried to pull away, but her brother's strength was too much. Her nails dug to his back as she tried to do anything to pull away from him. "John, let me go! You're scaring me!"

   "I'm sorry," he muttered. He had her pinned to him as he moved his hands behind her head.

   The scent hit her nostrils immediately.

   It was blood. It was the same scent she had smelled the night the car wrapped around the tree, throughout her walk to the hospital as she tried to find a restroom. Stefan had warned her about what happened the moment human blood touched her mouth.

   Her eyes widened as she realised what John was going to do. She tried to wiggle from his hold; she hit him as hard as she could to try and free from him. John held her tighter.

   "Stop!" she cried. "Please, John, stop!"

   "We need to save Grayson!"

   Florence's breath came in gasps. "Don't do this!" she pleaded. "Please, don't. I don't want to be this!"

   John turned her around and pushed his wrist to her mouth.

   Florence bit her lips, keeping them closed as hard as she could. Between the small space of her lips, a drop of blood flooded in. She tasted it the moment it touched her tongue. And she stopped moving.

   Stefan told her that any amount of human blood would complete the transition, have it be a droplet or a gulp. That tiny drop of her brother's blood had done it.

   John pulled his hand a*9poway and wrapped it in a piece of gauze he pulled from his pocket, keeping his eyes on his sister. "Sorry, Flo, but we can't loose Grayson, too."

   Stefan pulled away from her memories and shut his eyes. The image played in his mind, Florence crying for help while her brother forced his blood down her throat. Her screams echoed, a reminder of the other memories she had unknowingly shared to him the moments she was passed out on the floor of the cell. 

   "Was it fun?" he heard her say.

   Stefan opened his eyes and looked at her. Her hair was matter, with dry patches of blood making pieces of hair stuck to her face. She stared at him with boredom, a hand draped over her knee as she tilted her head to the side.

   He cleared his throat. "What?"

   "Was it fun," she repeated, "looking through my first memory as a vampire?" 

   There was no smile on her lips, like the way she used to smile whenever she said something silly all those years ago. It was as if he were watching her over a screen, the image that he remembered of her so blurry that he needed to blink several times. The difference was still there. An emotionless statue that stared back at him, eyes dim, face pale, and the way she moved as if she were a different person.

   He didn't recognise her. 

   "Cat got your tongue?"

   Stefan licked his teeth and looked down. "Why?" he asked, voice broken. "Why did you turn off your humanity, Florence?"

   She arched a brow and tilted her head to the other side. "You shouldn't ask questions you don't want answers to."

   "I want to know."

   Florence inhaled and closed her eyes, for a moment. When she opened them, the white of her eyes became a deep red and veins protruded beneath them. It was the face she showed him the moment he had seen her again, the face that appeared whenever she drank the bit of blood that was given to her daily. It was the face of a monster—a vampire. And then a grin that showed her fangs.

   "This is the reason why I turned off my humanity," she said, spreading her hands to showcase herself. "I can thank my sweetest brother for this gift."

   At the mention of John, Stefan made a face. He remembered the few times he had met him, both as a young adult and when he found out that he was Elena's birth father—never did he take a liking to the middle Gilbert child. Even if he had given his life to save Elena from a death she did not want, he still couldn't find him redeemable. Florence's memories made him hate him more.

   "We can help you, Florence," he whispered, tasting the way her name felt as it rolled off his tongue. He had said them before, tried to taste them, but all he could feel was dirt. But, as he said her name in front of her, he could taste mint and strawberries; he could hear the soft music that had played at Rosie's Diner; he could feel the way her hand felt on his cheek. Her, being alive, had made her name taste like something epic. "Elena went through the same thing, and we can help you get your humanity back. Just like we helped her."

   Florence inhaled and lifted one finger. "You want to help me by torturing me the same way the Augustine Society has tortured me for the past eighteen years... Well, if that's not a thought-out plan, I don't know what is." She licked her lips and leaned her head back against the wall, staring at him. "Is this how you got Elena to turn on her humanity?"

   "Damon snapped Matt Donovan's neck," he recalled. "He was the answer to her humanity."

   "Matt Donovan," Florence said out loud. She remembered him, a baby with the bluest eyes she had ever seen and almost no hair on his head. His mother had become a single mother when her boyfriend, and the father to her children, ran away. Miranda, being the ever caring person, had cared for Kelly Donovan and her children. There were times where they would spend the nights in her house, Matt and Elena sharing a crib. 

   Florence used to joke to Miranda about the possibility of Matt and Elena being together in the future, and the stories she would tell of them at their wedding reception.

   The memories made her stop breathing. They rung a certain emotion through her chest, a splurge of a heartbeat in a long-dead body. She furrowed her brows and stared at the floor as she thought what that little spark that had moved its way through her meant. 

   An emotion, she realised.

   Florence glanced at Stefan. "Whose neck do you plan to snap to turn on my humanity?" she asked, a small smirk forming its way around her lips. "Everyone I had ever cared about is dead."

   Stefan sighed. "I'm trying to help you, Florence."

   "How?"

   "Because the longer you stay like this, the more it will hurt," he stood and gripped the bars, staring down at her. "You fed from Elena!"

   "So?"

   "She's your niece."

   Florence yawned and shrugged her shoulders. "If you think that means anything to me, you'll have to rethink your strategy on how to get my humanity back. It's not working."

   "Tell me," Stefan pleaded. "Tell me what I need to do to have the old Florence come back."

   Florence stared at him. She remembered the boy with summer in his eyes, the way he caressed her and laughed with her. It was the same boy that stood across from her, behind the bars. Back then, she used to think of him as some kind of monster with a human mask. She knew she had been wrong, because no matter the horrible things he had done, Stefan could never be a monster. He was the boy with summer in his eyes and mint in his mouth, the boy who kissed her roughly and gently.

   The memories became all too familiar. They flooded back to her like a wave, washing over her like a well-needed gasp of breath. 

   Familiarity. 

   Her jaw tightened as she realised what they key to her humanity was. She preyed that Elena, Stefan, and even Damon, did not figure out what it was. If they did, she didn't know what would happen.