Chapter 16

                                    

                                          
Jo was understandably distressed.
                          
Apparently, Bonnie's friend group (or, as Vivianna and many others liked to call them— 'The Scooby Gang') had only recently learned about Kai Parker, which led to the discovery that they were actually acquainted with his three remaining siblings.
                          
After Damon, Bonnie, and Vivianna didn't return from the Other Side, everyone had gone ballistic. Not because they missed Vivianna (since they didn't really know her), but because Damon and Bonnie had been the lifeline of their friend group. Her, being the only witch in a group of vampires, who had helped them many times despite it hurting her. Him, Vivianna supposed, because he was funny on a few choice days.
                          
Elena Gilbert, Caroline Forbes, Jeremy Gilbert, and Stefan Salvatore had taken it the hardest, of course. Alaric Saltzman (who apparently was no longer the Original vampire that Vivianna recalled hearing he was) had coped with alcohol and choosing to teach a summer class at Whitmore College in preparation for becoming the Occult Studies Professor. There, he'd met Josette Laughlin (which was something Vivianna didn't understand— where did 'Laughlin' come from? She assumed it may have been her mother's maiden name. She figured keeping 'Parker' would make it a little obvious where she came from, if she really did know many witches). 
                          
After Stefan decided that disappearing and cutting everyone off was the best idea ever, Alaric had convinced Caroline and Elena to sign up for summer classes to take their mind off of it. He admitted it had been a little suspicious to him that Elena said 'yes' so quickly, until he learned that she'd been keeping in contact with Luke Parker, who'd been supplying her with herbs so she could hallucinate Damon.
                          
Vivianna refrained from making comments about how all of them had chosen to get through their grief that first month before Damon came back. 
                          
She didn't quite like that Stefan abandoned everyone, considering they needed him, too. 
                          
She admired that Caroline had actually gone to a counselor and had picnics with her mom to discuss everything (not to mention she'd been researching for weeks already on how to remove the Traveler spell). 
                          
She was concerned that Elena's first instinct had been drugs to pretend Damon hadn't died at all, and confused why those drugs hadn't been used to hallucinate Bonnie (though, it seemed this was not Bonnie's first time dying, and perhaps that explained it a bit). 
                          
She tried not to judge Alaric for drowning it all in booze, since it seemed to be common ground for him and Jo, who seemed to be forming a relationship. 
                          
And, when they revealed to Bonnie (apparently Jeremy's girlfriend?) that Jeremy had been sleeping around and drinking until he felt sick, Vivianna had pressed her lips together as tightly as humanly possible to not ruin her chances of getting the Traveler ashes. Apparently, Jeremy had collected them and kept them in an urn for her, alongside many of Bonnie's possessions, which he hadn't wanted to get rid of. 
                          
It all came down to everyone meeting for dinner to have a mental check-in with one another. Luke Parker had been invited by Elena as a 'thank you' for the herbs. He'd brought his twin sister Liv Parker, who apparently had a thing with Tyler Lockwood, the boy that'd hosted Julian (Vivianna made a mental note that she didn't want to see him anytime soon). Several shots of tequila later, embarrassing baby videos had been brought up, and the Parker twins discovered that Jo was their sister. 
                          
Vivianna found this quite sad, because that meant that right after sending Kai into the prison world, Jo had practically disappeared from their lives. Which was good for her, of course, but sucky for the twins. The way they spoke of their father (according to Jo) was startling for her. After finding four of his children dead, imprisoning one, and allowing the other to leave (with the real-world Ascendant), it was expected he'd been an even lousier father than the first time around with Kai.