"Your skin smells like light, I think you are the moon"

Text from; Stefan Salvatore I am sorry.

Text to; Stefan Salvatore Aren't we all.

Stefan's hand is curled tightly around my back, his hand is firm and steadying and it makes me forget about the ulterior motives that are in store today. But just for a second.

There is another hand against my back in that second, manicured nails dig into my vertebrae. It reminds me of my mom, how she used those long nails to trace slow patterns into my back until I fell asleep. But my mom always smelled like vanilla and this person smells like nail polish remover and a perfume that is just a tad too sweet.

"Dance with me." Katherine's sultry voice fills my ear, the girl is way too close for comfort, her head is resting on my shoulder. Stefan shakes his head and accidentally pinches my skin in between his thumb and pointer finger.

"No," he spits. Katherine's digs into my back even more aggressively, I can feel crescent shaped welts start to from in the sensitive skin.

"Fine then, should I pull poor Lola's spine out? She does look delicious." She whispers the last part right into my ear, her war breath filling the canal. Stefan lets go o my waist and looks at me for a second with eyes that tell a story I am yet to read. I nod to signify that I will be fine, that he can leave with her. What Katerina wants, Katerina always gets.

He puts out his hand out to Katherine, her dainty little hand takes his. Even Katherine's smile seems to predict a darkness that is inescapable.

I look at the floor when they disappear from my sight, my dress has been sweeping over the progressively dirtier looking marble all night and there are holes in it from where heels have stepped into the expensive fabric.

A large hand takes my chin, I turn my head to look at its owner.

"May I have this dance Miss Arends?"  My lips purse together a little bit, I almost want to say "aww" because Damon has been good to me all this time, even if he hasn't been good to himself.

I take his hand and I smile, it's a genuine big smile and I want you to know that.

"You may, Mister Salvatore." We dance and it feels good but I am still not sure if it feels real. Damon's hand is bigger than Stefan's and when he holds me he holds me with everything in him, a hand tightly wrapped around my waist, resting on my back.

The two brothers have an ugly habit of leaving her to her own devices. I am standing alone in the middle of a dancefloor and I know that if I was still in New York I would have grabbed the nearest boy and the most expensive bottle of champagne and I would have screamed it out, " I am Paloma Arends and I don't care!". But I am afraid I might have started caring, with the way I look around the crowd in a desperate search for the Salvatores.  How if I see a crow Damon's face fills my head. How weddings have started to remind me of Stefan.

Wasn't I supposed to be a part of the plan today? Wasn't I supposed to be a hero today, not just the everlasting damsel in distress, cutting my skin on the egg shells I balance on?

I decide it in that moment, that I won't be the damsel in distress anymore, that I am done with being saved when I could save myself. That I'll be a hero, just like the rest of the Mystic Falls gang, that I too belong here.

My heels click over the marble floor, I run up the large stairs set on being part of this adventure.

This house is large and when I think about the fact that these kind of houses used to be my daily life it feels like a strange and distant memory. Paintings in every corner, a statue or two in the foyer. Closed office door, a library the size of a small school.

It's her voice I hear first, Katerina. "I love you in a suit, so dashing." The strange thing about her, about Katherine or Katerina or whatever you like to call is that she is almost Elena Gilbert.

If you tried you could confuse her for Elena, if you wanted her to be. But if you listen closely you know she isn't. Katerina has a serpent's tongue and she bites it with every word she speaks.

I wonder if Stefan can hear the difference between Lorelei and I.  It's different of course, Lorelei and I will never exist in the same lifetime because we share the same body, we would never stand beside each other like this. And I have an accent that must not be the same as hers.

But I wonder still, if the Petrova girls and I fill the same void in Stefan's heart.

"What were you doing with it in the first place?"

"You're wasting your breath, Stefan."

"Unless it wasn't yours to begin with. In 1864 you faked your death. Who were you running from, Katherine?" She turns around and looks directly into my eyes and for just a glimpse I can see the fear filling hers, when I breath it's gone. I could feel sorry for Katherine, if she wasn't such a raging bitch.

"Look who has decided to join us." Her lips pucker into a half smile-half scowl. She runs for the barrier and I feel the wind blow with her speed, but it stops her right in front of me.

A feeling overwhelms me when I look into her eyes, one that makes me feel safe and more in danger than I have ever been before.

I step into the room, moving my body past Katherine's who stand their passively, confirming my thoughts. "You won't kill me Katherine."

Today I am not afraid, today I am fearless and brave and everything that fills the spaces in between.

"Lola what are you doing? Step back." Damon says, now standing up. Wrinkles fill his forehead and I think it's cute, how protective he likes to be over me. But he sees it then, how Katherine hasn't moved yet, how she is standing perfectly still like one of the statues in the foyer.

"You won't kill me Katherine, because I am not yours to kill." Katherine looks at me and turns her head, it might seem threatening to some but it reminds me of a lost little puppy dog.

"In 1987 you were living in Kansas, a small little farm girl all alone in this word. I remember you wearing a blue bow in your hair Lola and I remember killing your family, I ripped their throats out one by one and then you got the same treatment, I threw your body into a lake to corrode away into nothingness, like you should have done centuries ago." Katherine gloats, but the words don't seem to breach my heart. Somewhere far in the back of my mind I knew all this already.

One by one I see the families that I have lost pass my eyes, the families that died because of me.

I hope that she is right, Katherine. I hope that one day I will fade into nothingness, drift away into the wind to never return, to never bring this pain upon anyone else.

"Who were you running from Katherine?" Stefan asks her, interrupting my thought process. She doesn't answer but she does mouth an "I love you" in his direction.

"Whoever you were running from. They are coming for me too, aren't they?" Katherine decides to completely evade this statement, instead focusing on my eyes.

"You are right, Lola. This pathetic little lifetime, you aren't mine to kill."

Damon and I have thrown ourselves onto the couch, my feet ache from the heels they have been pushed into all night, my head from the information it has had to process.

He pours me a drink and I sink my body into the uncomfortable couch.

"We're missing the party. I'll have one of those." Says Katherine, her whiny voice seems to almost scratch at my brain.

"Right away Miss Katherine," Damon responds mimicking the voice of a servant boy.

He gives her the glass and Katherine smirks at him, "thank you."

She has a careful sip before Damon pushes her against a wall, a stake in his hand dangerously close to Katherine's heart. Stefan stops him, holds onto the stake.

"No, no! Damon don't."

"Yes, Damon please."

"The second the spell is lifted, I'm gonna drive a stake right through you heart."

"God, you're hot. When did you get so hot?" she bites her bottom lip seductively.

"Wait-" I put my hand up in a questioning gesture "-why exactly aren't we killing the bitch?"

I am done with Katherine's antics, she killed my entire family before taking the life of an innocent young girl. It's time for her to go.

Before anyone can answer me however there is a woman standing in front of the double doors. Even from this distance I can feel that she is not just any woman, she is a witch.

In her hand is the small milky white stone that has caused all this trouble in Mystic Fall.

The witch starts talking to Katherine but I can't focus on anything but the stone in her hand, I can hear it calling to me.

"It's mine." I say while pointing at it. I can feel it somehow, inside of me pulsing and I know that it is mine and I know that I must protect it.

"Not everything can be yours all the time little Lola, you'll figure that one out soon enough." Katherine sneers. She takes the stone into her hands and I can hear her nails tap on the fragile stone, the sound resonated through my head.

Katherine starts gasping for air, her hands surrounding the stone and it feels like my own personal revenge. Tailor made.

"You should have told me another witch was involved. She's a bennet witch, Katherine, but I'm sure you knew that."

"Wait, Elena!"

"Elena will be fine, the spell is broken. She'll heal quickly, Bonnie's with her." Katherine collapses onto the floor, into a broken little ball, she drops the stone next to her.

"Can I touch it?" I ask the witch, timidly. I get a nod in return."

I pick up the moonstone and it is weirdly warm when I clutch it. The stone overwhelms me with seemingly endless memories. First it's just what Katherine told me, how I had come home on a hot summer's day to my family's throats ripped out, my little brother's neck snapped.

How I had gotten the same treatment and was thrown into a lake to rot, I can still feel the cold on my back and I shiver.

Then it's the others, every other family I have ever lost before, the loved one that have left me.

I see hundred of people over what must be hundreds of years.

I see lovers, before and after Stefan Salvatore.

I see the moonstone inside of my hand, before today. I feel someone put it in there and fold my hands closed around it, holding mine in theirs. I don't hear what he is saying and I don't recognize his voice but he looks like a man heavy with guilt, his eyes almost closed.

Have they been hunting me for this long? Erasing every little promise of happiness that has ever dared poke its head around the curtain.

I look up at the two brothers and my mind feels so heavy with these memories, way too many for anyone to have in their head at one. It must be as heavy as his had been.

"I need it gone. Lock it in with Katerina for all I care."

I throw the stone at Damon who catches it just in time before I march out of the room,.

The parking lot is the only place where everything seems to calm down in my head.

There is a girl standing against a car, she must be Elena since I have just seen Katherine passed out on the carpet. She is texting someone rapidly, her eyebrows are furrowed and some blood has stained her shirt.

We aren't the best of friends, Elena and I. I can't blame her for that, there isn't a rule book for when your boyfriend's formerly dead ex-fiancé walks back into his life.

None of this means that I don't want the girl to be ok.

"Hey you alright?" I ask and put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Elena nods and embraces me, it feels strange but it also feels like this is exactly what's supposed to happen. The hug is tight and I can see how this is what she needed more than anything else.

"Thank you, for everything you have done for us. Even when Stefan was yours first, before he was ever mine or Katherine's, you have still done everything in your power to help us. And that is- kind of amazing you know." I laugh at her, my teeth poking out from under my lips, tears in my eyes.

"Stefan is no ones to keep Elena. I am not Lorelei, Lorelei isn't me and that's okay. He sees it too, I promise you and he loves you with all of his heart."

Elena laughs back and her phone rings.

"Hey Jer. Yeah I've got my car. Tell Bonnie that whatever she did, I'm starting to feel better. Yeah, you drive her home. I'm just gonna go straight to bed. Okay."

She hangs up and we just smile at each other for a couple of second before bursting into a giggling fit. And when I look at her now, like this, I can't imagine anyone ever confusing this girl in front of me with Katherine Pierce.

Our happiness is short lived however as a cloth is pushed in front of both our mouth.

I am forced into dreams of crows, death and the letter "M".