Chapter Text
“Hey Jenna?” I started innocently over our lunch of leftovers the next day. Maybe too innocently, going by the suspicious look she threw me.
“Eloise?” She drawled back. Yeah, I played the innocent thing too much. I huffed and dropped the act.
“Lor is coming to town. I know you don’t know him, so you probably won’t let him crash on our couch, but do you think he could come for dinner some night?” Enzo and I had decided that it was time for him to meet the fam. Or what was left of it. We had never been entirely certain if Miranda knew of Grayson’s activities with Augustine, so we never would have risked introducing him to her (and was also why I referred to him as Lor instead of Enzo), but Jenna and Elena were absolutely clueless. Now I had to find a way to change that without outing Enzo… Sigh.
“Lor… Your penpal?” Jenna asked. “Wait. He knows where you live?! That’s super dangerous!”
“Psh. We’ve been talking for seven years. Besides, I accidentally let it slip, like, four years ago, and this is the first time he’s ever brought up meeting. Until then, he thought I was just using a P.O. Box in a nearby city.”
“What’s he doing in town?”
I shrugged.
“Didn’t ask. He might just be passing through between landmarks. He’s on an aimless road trip right now.”
“That’s- what does he even do for work?”
“Right now? Hustles pool and darts rather successfully. He only got discharged recently, but he has enough banked away to travel a bit before putting his nose to the grindstone.”
Jenna stared at me, and I couldn’t quite read her expression.
“If it endears him to you at all, he’s on the fence about the tattoo, too.”
She just threw her hands in the air. At least I could interpret that easily enough as frustration. Maybe exasperation. One of the two. Both?
“Dinner. At the Grill, not the house. And he’s definitely not staying here,” she finally said.
I pouted.
“Don’t give me that. This is a grown man who for some reason kept up a correspondence with a ten year old child. That’s sketchy, Lou.”
“To be fair, I’m approximately 98% sure that his C.O. forced him into that program in the first place. And I think he only kept up with it at first for the comic strips I kept sending him.”
Yeah, Enzo and I came up with a backstory for our acquaintanceship shortly after I was caught talking to him on the phone by Miranda when I was 14. I had put her off with the very basic “penpal” thing for a couple days until I managed to hit the jackpot in my frantic Googling. Now, as far as anyone knew, I had signed up for a “write to a soldier” program when I was ten, and his commanding officer had ordered him to participate for some unknown (possibly confidential… or just embarrassing) reason. The program I blamed went defunct not even a year after it opened. Something about the administration not bothering to require parental permission for kids as young as six. Worked in our favor, really. I had to get a little more vague as to why he’d continued writing to a preteen after the program ended, but everyone bought into the story well enough. Miranda even thought it was an “honorable” thing for me to do, though she scolded me gently for not asking permission in the first place.
“Comic strips,” Jenna deadpanned. I nodded emphatically.
“From the Sunday paper. With color.”
I’d have to remember to tell Enzo about that.
--
“So… Finally meeting Lor in person, huh?” Tyler questioned a couple hours later when I checked in with him before the game.
“Why do you say it like that?” I asked, giving him the side-eye.
“No reason,” he grinned. “So Jenna approved of the design?” He glanced at the portfolio of tattoo artists I was looking through.
“Of course she did! It’s amazing!” I scrunched my nose at the next tattoo I came across. Why would Jenna put a picture of a full sleeve of intertwined snakes in there? Snakes freaked me the fuck out! I flipped it over quickly without even trying to examine the detail. Tyler laughed at me.
“How many studios did she look into?”
“Um… Six, I think? Eight artists from six studios, is what I’ve counted so far. I’ve only glanced through it once, though, so I might have missed a couple.”
“That’s still a lot of research for something she just decided.”
“You’re not wrong,” I agreed. I had almost wondered if Jenna had already been researching for a tattoo of her own, but realized it didn’t matter all that much in the end. If Jenna was considering a tattoo, it was a personal enough decision that she didn’t want to discuss it with her teenage niece even when the topic was brought up. I wasn’t going to push. Besides, she could have just as easily gotten the research from Allison, the TA with the beautiful body art.
I reached the last page in the folder. It was one I hadn’t noticed on my first speedy go-through. I whistled low and held it out to Tyler.
“What do you think? This artist the winner?” It was a full-color pin-up girl, only she was wearing armor. If Tyler had denied my request to design my valkyrie, I would probably have considered using this artist. They at least seemed to be on the right track.
“Oh, I like that.” He took the picture from me and studied it in more detail before flipping it over to read the studio and artist information on the back. “Black Knight Ink… This one’s in Richmond,” he said.
“Not surprising, most are from Richmond or McKinley. I’ll have to set up a time to go check out the studio with Jenna and get a quote if she’s good with what she sees.”
“How much do you think it will run?”
I considered that for a minute, comparing his design against some of the ones I’d gotten in my first life.
“Probably at least nine.”
Tyler did a spit take of the Gatorade he’d just sipped.
“Hundred?!”
I nodded, slightly amused by his reaction.
“Most studios charge about $100 an hour, if not a bit more, and this is full-color and pretty detailed. I’d put $900 as the absolute minimum.” It could easily end up double that, but Tyler was already not handling the possible cost well, so I wasn’t going to share. He was used to his parents buying him just about anything he wanted, so he wasn’t familiar with dropping large amounts of his own cash on much of anything but alcohol.
“If I had known it would be that expensive, I would have done it in black and white… Or more simplistic or something,” he muttered.
I gasped and moved his drawing out of his reach when he went to grab it.
“Don’t even think about it!” Sure, I had pictures and scans of it just in case it somehow got damaged, but I wasn’t going to let Tyler take (or ruin) the original. “Don’t worry about the cost. I knew what I was getting into when I asked for a valkyrie.”
Our attention was drawn to the field as Tanner blew his whistle to gather the team.
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me how you have so much cash,” he said as he got up.
“Sure,” I responded. Hopefully he’d forget about it. A teenager investing in the stock market (especially considering how young I started out) was downright unusual. And that’s not even taking into account how almost all of my investments did quite well. It’d be hard to explain. “Good luck with the game.”
--
The game was called off at half-time due to Tanner almost dying. That’s right, almost. And Tyler was the one to find him bleeding out when he went in search of the coach just before the second half was supposed to start.
We got good use out of the whiskey that night (Tyler had vetoed tequila, pointing out that I’d picked the booze last time). Matt even joined us, more than a little spooked that Tanner had a very similar wound to what Vicki had gotten not even a week before.
“What the hell kind of animal does that?” Matt wondered (again) after his fourth drink in under an hour. I spent a little too long looking between the two of them.
“What do you know, Lou?” Tyler asked. I took a deep breath. Here we go.
“Do you remember those stories of my dad’s that I told you when we were kids?”
--
They didn’t believe me, obviously. But they were willing to humor me with a visit to the lake house for proof whenever Jenna would let us go. Probably because they both just wanted to go out there and not because they believed there actually was proof. I was pretty sure I could convince Jenna to let us go the next weekend. I was going to try the whole “Tyler’s a little traumatized by finding Tanner like that” thing, along with “I think some time away from the whole town gossiping about it would do him some good.” Since the football season was suspended for at least the rest of the month in deference to the coach’s fragile medical state, we wouldn’t even need to work around their games.
--
Elena showed off her pretty necklace when I finally made it back to the house a little after noon the next day (Jenna was totally failing on enforcing curfew). She didn’t say anything about Stefan having super fast healing, so either she was keeping it to herself or he hadn’t found a fight to interfere in. She did mention Damon being a bit of a creep, though, so he had probably tried to compel her.
“You were right, Lou. There are some major issues there,” she told me, obviously upset. Whether that was because she was getting pulled into the drama or because she didn’t actually know what that drama was, well, that was anyone’s guess.
And, surprise, surprise, Damon hadn’t heeded my warning to leave Elena out of it. Well, hopefully Enzo would be a big enough distraction for him that I wouldn’t have to do anything that could potentially get me killed to dissuade him from continuing on that path.
--
“You must be Lor,” Jenna greeted Enzo as we met at the Grill that night.
“It’s Enzo, actually,” he replied as he shook her hand. I saw Damon’s head snap up across the restaurant out of the corner of my eye. He stared in disbelief while Enzo slid into the booth next to me.
“Why does Lou call you ‘Lor’, then?” Elena asked.
“Believe it or not, there were two Lorenzos in my squad when we first started writing to each other. I drew the short straw. It was habit to go by Lor at the time to avoid confusion.”
“I like ‘Enzo’ better,” I declared decisively, opening my menu. “Totally doing away with ‘Lor.’ Made it sound like you were a master of stories or something.”
“So, Enzo… What made a soldier start conversing with a ten-year-old?” Jenna asked shrewdly, ignoring her own menu for the moment (not that she needed to look at it; the selection hadn’t changed in at least six years).
“Ah, that would have been Major Lewis,” he replied. “My commanding officer at the time. He decided I was too sullen and disconnected. As I never knew my own family and didn’t have anyone of my own to write to, he signed me up for that correspondence program.”
“And you were part of the U.S. Army?” was the skeptical follow-up, alluding to his accent.
He chuckled.
“I immigrated to the States when I was 17 to get away from some memories back home. Military service was both a good job for a young man with not many marketable skills and a relatively quick way to gain citizenship.”
“What do you mean?” Elena asked.
“Normally you have to have be a permanent resident for five years before you can apply for naturalization. With a year of honorable military service, that no longer applies. The paperwork is still awful, of course, but the timeline is preferable.” Enzo stretched his arm across the back of the booth behind me, a motion which Jenna watched with sharp eyes. “Anyway, Lou mostly kept me entertained with Marmaduke’s antics and her adventures in self-defense.”
“Marmaduke?”
“I’ve always wanted a Great Dane,” Enzo said wistfully. I rolled my eyes and snatched up his menu, thwacking him in the chest with it.
“Figure out what you want to eat. You don’t have the benefit of already having had a hundred meals at this place, so get to looking.”
--
Naturally, Enzo absolutely charmed Jenna all through dinner. Not so much that she offered our place up as a crash pad for while he was in town, but enough that she wasn’t quite as wary of him as she had been before the meal. Still, that was quite a feat when he said barely anything about himself in an effort to keep the lies to a manageable minimum.
Elena kept glancing between me and him, occasionally wiggling her eyebrows at me after pointedly looking at his arm which hadn’t moved from the booth back behind me (which drew an eye-roll on my part each time).
Tyler dropped by briefly to meet and appraise Enzo. After the meet-and-greet, he made his way to meet Matt to play pool, though I could see him keeping a close eye on our table. Judging by Matt’s jeering, Tyler’s split focus wasn’t helping his game any.
My infrequent glances at Damon revealed him drinking heavily throughout the evening. By the time we paid our check, almost two hours after we sat down, he was sitting glumly at the bar with a near empty bottle of bourbon.
--
"You looked positively gleeful when we left the Grill,” Enzo prodded as we sat on the porch swing outside the house. It was the closest we were going to get to privacy. No way was Jenna going to let us hang out in my room with the door shut. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t care if Enzo looked my age (she certainly didn’t care about the abundance of time Elena already spent with Stefan), but as it was, she thought he was at least 25.
“Damon Salvatore looked absolutely miserable!” I told him cheerfully.
“And that makes you happy?” He raised his eyebrows at me in question.
“I told you he’s a creep. He’s got some drama going on with his brother, which, whatever, not my problem. But he’s been pulling Elena into it, drawing her into the misery just to upset Stefan. And that’s not okay with me.”
“Yeah, he would,” Enzo muttered low enough that I barely heard him.
“Do you know him?” I asked, head cocked to the side as if I didn’t already know. “You were pretty quick to visit after I mentioned his name.”
He sighed heavily.
“Do you remember what I told you about Augustine? The ‘friend’ that left me for dead?”
“That was Damon?” I asked, not having to fake the cold tone I used. I had grown quite fond of Enzo over the past ten years. After he nodded, I let the silence lie. For about a minute. “So, how are we going to fuck with him?”
“We?” He shook his head. “No, no. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
“I was already planning on helping karma along a little bit in retaliation for the games he’s been playing with Elena. Now I just have more of a reason.”
He eyed me for a good long while, probably to assess my sincerity. But he was well aware of how stubborn I was. He sighed in resignation.
“Are you still on vervain?” He asked quietly, mindful that we still might be overheard by the other residents of the house. Well, Jenna. Elena was up in her room chatting with Stefan on the phone.
“Of course. Both jewelry and drinking it. Speaking of, stay away from the regular coffee at my house unless you want to build up an immunity. The decaf is safe, though.”
“How about your sister? And your aunt?”
“Both have coffee every morning, and Elena has at least two pieces of jewelry that she almost always wears. I’m pretty sure Stefan gave her a vervain necklace, too, and I doubt she’ll ever take that off. Jenna has a locket, but she doesn’t wear it that often. She’s not big on jewelry.”
“How is it that you know about… everything… when they don’t?”
I shrugged.
“Elena never believed the stories when we were kids. I did. And then I found you, which confirmed it. Jenna didn’t grow up in a founding family, so I doubt she ever even heard the stories. Or, if she did, it was when she was older and already thought it was fiction.”
“How’d you know about the Salvatores?”
“Would you believe I have a spidey sense?” I asked playfully.
“No,” he deadpanned.
“Hah! That would be cool, though. No, that was all deductive reasoning. There was a set of Salvatore brothers named Stefan and Damon back when the town had a ‘problem.’” I used finger quotes. “And their lapis lazuli rings are obvious. And ugly.” I glanced at his own ring. “Yours is much more tasteful.”
“Are you sure it doesn’t have something to do with the way you just seem to know things?” He looked at me expectantly.
“What do you mean?” I was pretty sure I hadn’t let anything slip other than my excellent use of the stock market.
“You knew exactly where the Bennett grimoire was. And that it had the daylight spell. When you were seven,” he pointed out.
Oh, right. I’d forgotten about that. Probably because he hadn’t once brought it up in the decade since I’d pointed him in its direction.
“My family has old journals that mentioned it,” I said with a calm I didn’t feel.
“See, I might believe that, if your heart wasn’t beating so fast, Princess.”
“Don’t call me that,” I scowled. He only pulled out the ‘princess’ when he wanted to irritate me or make a point. He let us sit in silence for a few minutes while I tried to gather my thoughts. Stupidly, I had never thought of a good explanation. I had thought I’d be able to successfully hide my foreknowledge behind logic and simply being a believer. Which, as it turned out, was not logical, and probably full of hubris, besides.
Enzo finally sighed.
“You don’t have to tell me the truth right now, Lou, but whatever it is could get you into trouble if you aren’t careful with what you know. Antagonizing someone as volatile as Damon just because you can definitely falls under ‘not careful.’”
“It’s not just because I can,” I protested. “It serves a purpose. He’s greatly wronged my family. Vengeance is a given.”
“I don’t think pulling your sister into his drama justifies as much vengeance as I think you’re planning,” he told me wryly.
I gave him a look that clearly said he should know better.
“I was including you in the family that he’s wronged, you moron.” I was almost hurt by the look of surprise that settled on his face. It’s not like I had outright told him that I considered him family before. “I don’t care about all that many people,” I reminded him. “When I do, it’s without bounds. Short of hurting myself or the rest of mine, there’s very little I wouldn’t do for you.” And, honestly, for the people I truly cared about, my own wellbeing wasn’t all that high up on the list, either. Which meant Elena, Jenna, Tyler, Caroline, and Enzo were my priorities. Everyone else was pretty much on their own unless one of my triggers was hit. The way Damon used Tina was triggering, actually, and I was going to somehow make him pay for that too, but it wasn’t as high a priority as protecting Caroline from him.
He cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“So, tell me more about this tattoo you’re getting.”
I allowed the change in topic.
“Sure. Hey, did you ask Bree about the vervain ink thing?” I wanted to know if the fanon vervain-ink-tattoo would actually prevent compulsion, but Bree didn’t know me, so I’d tasked Enzo with finding out if it would work.
“She said it might have an effect for a week or two- maybe a month with the size you’re going with- but your body would slowly absorb the vervain and metabolize it the same way as if you drink or inject it. And finding a tattoo artist who would work with the mix could be difficult. And expensive. She knows someone in Atlanta who’d be willing to try, but he’d likely charge about triple the normal rate.”
I wrinkled my nose. I wasn’t going to shell out maybe five or six grand for something that wouldn’t even give me long-term protection. That would take way too big of a chunk out of my savings.
“That’s a bummer. It would have been nice not to have to worry about losing my jewelry.”
“Have you picked a studio yet?” Enzo asked.
“I think so. One sec.” I ducked into the house to grab the portfolio Jenna had given me and pulled out both Tyler’s sketch and the armored pin-up girl. I’d emailed him a picture of the sketch before, but the scan wasn’t the highest quality. “This is what I’m going with,” I said, handing him the valkyrie sketch. “And I think this tattooist is who I want to go to.”
“Your friend really is talented,” he commented. I grinned. After taking in the picture of my future tattoo, he glanced at the pin-up girl briefly before turning it over. “Black Knight Ink in Richmond?”
“Mmhmm. Jenna wants to check out the studio before she officially signs off on the tattoo- she’d have to literally sign the paperwork, anyway- so I’m going to see if she’ll take me sometime in the next few weeks to get a quote and set up an appointment. I’ll talk to her about it after school tomorrow.”
“Not tonight? She’s still awake.”
Even I could hear her still moving around in the house. I was pretty sure she was clanging stuff about in the kitchen on purpose, since she didn’t cook at all and we had just eaten.
“Nah, I’ve pushed my luck with the requests enough for tonight.” I had somehow gotten permission to take Matt and Tyler out to the lake house.
“What do you mean?”
I told him quietly about my plans for the next weekend.
“Aside from the fact that you’ll be alone with two teenage boys-” here, he wiggled his eyebrows at me. I shoved him from the side. “-cluing them in could be dangerous for me, Gorgeous.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll do everything I can to keep from exposing you, Enzo,” I promised. “I’m also hoping to get them to not jump on the ‘all vampires are bad’ bandwagon that Tyler’s parents head up. They just need to know to be cautious while a certain psycho is in town.” I bit my lip uncertainly. He said he wouldn’t push me on how I knew things, and hopefully what I was about to drop on him wouldn’t change that. “Especially if he’s here for what I think he is.”
“And what is that?”
After getting another assurance that he was keeping an eye and ear on our surroundings for any potential vampire eavesdroppers, I told him about Katherine and the tomb in as quiet a voice as I could manage.