Chapter Text
My head was pounding as bright light assaulted my eyes through my eyelids. I tried not to groan and pulled the blanket over my head, cocooning myself like an overgrown caterpillar. Yet, the moment I did, I realized something was off. The texture was not right. Ever since I was a little kid, I could never fall asleep without a blanket or something else to cover me, so I became quite familiar with my bedding set. This was not it. Not mine. Alarm bells rang in my head.
I slowly pulled it off me and cracked open my eyes. The brown leather couch I was on and the room I was in were unfamiliar. The blanket that I wondered about was a thick, fluffy blue one that I had never seen before. My heart rate started to pick up as I thought about the situation.
A door creaked open behind me. I snapped my neck to look at the newcomer. It was a relatively young-looking woman who was dressed in gray sweatpants and a green T-shirt. Her strawberry blond hair caught my attention, as did the smile on her face. She seemed familiar, but I could not place where from.
“Oh, the sleeping beauty wakes! Are you alright?” She took a couple of steps towards me, sitting on the armrest of the sofa, reaching out to feel my forehead for temperature. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I smiled uneasily. She didn’t seem dangerous, but so few dangerous people actually looked threatening. I didn’t know what to do, so I went with my first instinct.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” I asked quietly, trying to get my bearings.
Her face fell. I felt bad about upsetting such a beautiful and seemingly kind person. She froze for a second before taking the hand that she just used to check my forehead and dragging it harshly through her hair. Just as she was about to answer me, another person came barreling into the room.
“Aunt Jenna, have you seen my phone? I need to text Bonnie that I’m not going to that committee thing that Care organized tomorrow.”
I stared at her and wondered if I was dreaming. But why would I dream about Nina Dobrev looking like she hasn’t slept in days? Her comment, though, made me realize who the woman next to me was. But how was it possible that Elena Gilbert’s aunt Jenna Sommers was in the same room as me? And Elena Gilbert herself, for that matter? None of this made any sense. I couldn’t, or at least shouldn't be in a TV show that I haven’t watched in about two years. Were they the actors? But that still made so very little sense…
What did the living room in The Vampire Diaries look like again? It definitely wasn’t memorable enough that I’d recognize it on sight, but now that I looked around…
“I think it’s on the counter,” Jenna Sommers smiled tightly, “Would you mind staying alone for a bit this evening, Elena? I think I might need to take Luna to this hospital. She just asked me who I was.”
The brunette’s eyes widened. “What? I thought she was okay after that fall. Yeah, I’ll be fine and Jer's probably going to be home soon, go get her checked out!”
What fall was she talking about? I don’t remember any falls. The last thing I remember is falling asleep in my distinctly non-TVD-related room.
“I don’t feel bad enough to go to the hospital,” I protested weakly, trying to ignore my headache. Both of them looked at me in a way that made me feel like an uncooperative child. I curled into myself and decided to keep quiet.
“Darling, you fell down the stairs yesterday,” Jenna said as she put her hand on my shoulder to comfort me. ”You got up and walked it off, so we thought you were okay. You fell asleep watching TV, a bit earlier than you usually would, but I didn’t think anything was wrong since none of us saw you hit your head yesterday.”
My head spun with possibilities. The woman seemed so sincere, I could practically feel her guilt in the air. It made me feel awful, upsetting her again. I rubbed the back of my head; it felt normal, no bruising, no pain, definitely no blood, so I didn’t think I had hit it either.
“Aunt Jenna has been in your life for years, Lu. If you can’t remember her, this is serious.” Nina Dobrev’s most famous character frowned. “I’m going to get you some of your clothes, and Jenna’s going to drive you to a hospital.”
This did not feel like a discussion, which irked me a bit, but it was not like what they were saying was unreasonable. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I supposed getting checked out by a healthcare provider would not be the worst thing in this situation.
Ten minutes later, I was wearing a black pair of jeans and a cobalt sweater I did not recognize. Jenna guided me into a red Mini Cooper and put “Mystic Falls Hospital" into her GPS. I fought the urges to laugh or pinch myself. This was a very bizarre dream, I decided in the privacy of my mind.
The clinic visit was not very helpful. I was told that without blunt force trauma being detected on any scans, the doctors could not make any sense or reason of my supposed amnesia. He did not say it in my ear range, but I got the distinct feeling that one of the PAs who looked at the scans thought that I was making the whole thing up. His supervising physician looked at me like he believed me but did not understand what was going on. I wondered idly if Meredith Fell worked at the hospital at this point, since she popped up out of nowhere in one of the later seasons. Jenna and I left the hospital after almost two hours of conversations that got us nowhere. The poor woman looked like she was about to cry.
We sat in her car, but she did not start it; instead, she chose to look at the stars through the window. Despite the sky not being dark yet, they glowed softly this evening. It was a beautiful scene, one that I never would have seen from the window of my room in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“I don’t know what the right thing to do now is,” Jenna admitted hollowly, and I grabbed her hand, because what do you do in this kind of situation? “I guess I can tell you about your life with us, and you can tell me if you remember anything I talk about?”
I nodded, “Okay, sounds good.”
“I met your father when I was just starting to complete my psychology pre-requisite courses in undergrad. He was in my introduction to sociology class, we got to talking, and he told me about his beloved daughter.” She squeezed my hand and swallowed hard. I almost wanted to stop her since this seemed to be so hard for her, but a part of me felt like I needed to know this. “He was gushing about how smart you were, doing well on your projects. Eventually, I met you after we started hanging out more. He was a good friend, and you were adorable, so I spent a lot of time at your house.”
This felt like a stranger’s story, but I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt.
“Everything was great until three years ago, he disappeared. There was no trace for the police to follow. One day, he was there, and one day, he just… Wasn’t.” She sighed as if she still couldn’t believe that this had happened. “After a couple of days, they said you would go into the foster system, but I volunteered to look after you. You were already fifteen, mostly independent, and you felt safe with me, so it was a no-brainer.”
Oh, she was definitely understating her actions. I doubted many college students (or was this after college? She seemed like she was still studying something) would decide to take in a random teenager, even if they were friends with the teen’s parents. She didn’t strike me as the most responsible adult at first glance, but my impression must have been dead wrong this time. Not that she appeared care-free or anything, she just seemed like a fun person to be around.
“We lived in Whitmore, about forty minutes from here by car, thirty if you speed. That flat wasn’t luxurious, but it was comfortable enough. That was until…” Jenna breathed in and closed her eyes. “Two months ago, my sister Miranda, her husband Grayson, and Elena, whom you’ve met earlier, got into a car accident that sent them off a bridge. Elena lived, but her parents did not survive.”
My heart clenched at the grief in her voice. I barely connected the dots that it has not been that long since this wonderful woman lost her sister. I didn’t have any siblings, not in my first life, and presumably not in this one. I reached over and hugged her. She held me in her arms for a second before letting me settle back into my seat.
“The court decided that since I had experience raising you, I was a superior candidate to raise Elena and Jeremy, her younger brother. We moved to Mystic Falls and lived in my sister’s house for a bit. And then you fell yesterday. You know the rest.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay?” She questioned.
“Thank you for telling me.” I wasn’t sure what exactly was happening, but I appreciated her actions nonetheless. “I’m sorry that I don’t remember any of this.”
She sniffled and nodded. “Okay. That’s fine, sweetheart. Let’s get you home.”
I smiled, unsure, and watched her start the car.
Three days later, I came to terms with the fact that if this was a dream, it was one I was unlikely to ever wake up from. There were several conclusions I've reached:
- I’m not sure how the hell I got to this world, or what happened to me in my old world. I don’t remember getting hurt or anything, but traumatic memories can always be repressed. My lack of memory did not tell me a damn thing. This seems to be a theme in my life.
- If I found a witch or somebody who could send me back, there would likely be a price I would not be comfortable with. Sure, Once Upon a Time taught me that one, but I also remembered how Damon (unsuccessfully) attempted to sacrifice several people to break the sire bond connection with… Charlotte? Or whatever her name was.
- I’m not sure I would survive this world long enough to meet a witch smart and strong enough to even do that. I would need to change a lot of things to guarantee my survival. That is something that I needed to plan more thoroughly. Even if I do everything right, there are no guarantees; there is no “fairness” in this world. I just need to make do.